Drag & Drop support

[Jane Somerfield]

Can JSF support a large data chart (more than 200 rows and about 20 columns), which can be reorganized by drag and drop the columns around in the table (e.g., drag the 4th column to be the 1st one) and the rows can be sorted according to multiple column criteria?

[Tim Holloway]

Not directly. The core JSF library doesn't require JavaScript and the only way to do drag and drop in a web browser is by the aid of a client-side program.

You may find one of the third-party add-on packages like RichFaces could do that.

[Jane Somerfield]

Originally posted by Tim Holloway:
Not directly. The core JSF library doesn't require JavaScript and the only way to do drag and drop in a web browser is by the aid of a client-side program.

You may find one of the third-party add-on packages like RichFaces could do that.

Flex can do it easily. Sun is out of touch and making a framework such as JSF its standard framework. Let Sun set.

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) also has some great Drag and Drop functionality, seeing that we're sortof of the topic.

-Cameron McKenzie

[Paul Sturrock]

Originally posted by Jane Somerfield:


Flex can do it easily. Sun is out of touch and making a framework such as JSF its standard framework. Let Sun set.

I think you misunderstand how browser applications work, and what JSF is for. Flex uses Flash, a proprietory client-side technology, to implement rich user interfaces in a browser. It doesn't use native browser capabilities to do this. In this respect its GUI building tools are comparable with other client-side technologies, such as ActiveX, Java Applets, or Silverlight.

[Tim Holloway]

Originally posted by Paul Sturrock:

Flex uses Flash, a proprietory client-side technology, to implement rich user interfaces in a browser.

In which case DON'T use Flex if you're planning on selling anything to me. I'm alleged to be near the leading edge of technology. This means that I have a 64-bit desktop system and a smartphone running Windows Mobile.

Guess what? Flash doesn't work on either of these systems. Adobe has never released a 64-bit version of Flash and I refuse to downgrade my web browser just to watch YouTube. Nor do they support my mobile device, which is supposed to give me "on-the-spot" web-based information.

The same goes for most of the other add-on client technologies, though the phone has limited applet support.

You may say "so what?", but I went car shopping last year. One major manufacturer lost a deal worth over $20K for the simple reason that their home page was Flash-based and I couldn't get any info on their product line. I shopped at their competitors websites instead where I wasn't locked out by lack of the ability to run Flash on my state-of-the-art 64-bit desktop computer.

JavaScript isn't a problem for me. However, some people do switch JavaScript off for security reasons. This is where JavaScript-savvy JSF tags are a big help, because they can help the application fall back to non-JavaScript operation without requiring a lot of extra developer work.