JSF: Expected differences between implementations

[Gregg Bolinger]

Can we expect a lot of UI Component differences between each of the different implementations of JSF that come along? What I mean is, will each implementation have the possibility of created a different Tag for, say, a Textfield? Or does the specification only allow for one type of tag definition.
I am really concerned about this. I don't undestand why Sun could't make a base implenentation that anyone can use (license free) and then just have the specification there for anyone that wants to extend what is already available. I am not excited about the fact that each implementation could have all different UI Components for simply rendering HTML.
Correct me if anything I stated was inaccurate.
Thanks.

[Bill Dudney]

Hi Greg,
Good question. The spec standardizes the base set of HTML renderers, the base set of UIComponents and the base set of JSP Actions that tie them together. So any implemnetation of JSF will have to have an action <command_button...> and that tag will have to connect the UICommand to the Button renderer so if you stick to the standard set of stuff then you will be portable.
However there is great likely hood that many of the vendors will provide a lot of add on components, renderers and custom actions. Here is a link to Oracle's site that lays out there commitment to JSF and discusses a bit of their plans. The interesting bit is about ADF UIX which was/is oracle's webframework. They are recasting ADF UIX to be an extension to JSF. If you use the extensions you will obviously be tied to ADF UIX but there will be some compelling extensions.
I think all this is good for the first round of JSF. Over time the community will converge on what is important to standardize and what can be left to innovation. Time will tell what extensions become standard...

[Gregg Bolinger]

Well, I jave noticed one major difference between the beta and final. They removed the _ from the component tags. So instead of

<h:input_text />

It is now

<h:inputText />