Ok, you obviously havent gone through the free, multimedia tutorial on my website about how to put together a JSF portlet, and how easy it is. You know, I do all that work, and give it away for free, and nobody uses it. Like one of those trees falling in the forest that nobody hears.
But yes, JSF is the way to go with portlet development, as far as I'm concenrned. Now, not every portlet is a framework portlet, but if you need one, go JSF.
Apache has a bunch of 'bridges' that allow you to plop a JSF application into a portlet with almost no hassle. It's amazing! :thumb: You can create applications that can stand alone as a regular web app, or use them within a portlet as well. That's pretty compelling.
I'm an IBM afficiacondo, and I tend to appreciate where IBM leads the industry. I mean, they're not always right, but they're a good elephant to follow. IBM heavily supported
Struts in their portal, providing a variety of struts brigdes to wrap a struts app in a portlet. It worked fairly well, but there were certainly rules to follow. However, I have seen the IBM portal team fairly heavily steer the ship towards JSF. Struts and portal certainly hasn't been thrown away, but from their integrated tooling and general support, it looks like they've decided quite clearly that JSF in a portlet is the new way to go.
Furthermore, I'd look ahead to JSR-286, as opposed to JSR-168. The new portlet specification JSR286 speaks quite a bit on the topic of JSF support. It's just an added bit of confidence that the JSF portlet apps we write now will be very portable in future portal applications servers.
So, is JSF the way to go? As I've always said, there is no right way to do anything, there are only wrong ways, and the best we can do is not do it the wrong way. (Is it any wonder why I lost my job as a motivational speaker? :p ) I can say with great confidence that JSF, while perhaps not the right way to go, certainly isn't the wrong way, and sometimes, it's right to simply not do something wrong.
And check out my signature links for the free portal tutorials. There's also a short chapter on JSR168 JSF portlets in my portlet book as well. Feel free to buy yourself a dozen copies.
-Cameron McKenzie
[ September 15, 2007: Message edited by: Cameron McKenzie ]