Hayrol Reyes Mejía

RichFaces not only works with SEAM, it's nicely integrated with SEAM. The chosen view technology for SEAM is... facelets.

I know that RichFaces is fully integrated with SEAM, of course it's from the same comunity. But ICEFaces is also integrated with SEAM, and of course with other frameworks. So, if you are using SEAM the comunity encourage the use of RF, or IF as you want.

Also, newer versions of the RichFaces framework DO provide an AJAX Push mechanism.

Never have tested RF Ajax Push but ICEFaces Ajax Push, and it works almost excelent.

Of course, it's a matter of several variables decision. What you have knowledge, what is using in your company, what is more standard (relative), what you like more :-), etc.

I still using IF (and have worked with both) when I have the opportunity to choose.

If you like to have a bit more control in your hands you may prefer RF. If you trust your framework you will like IF

Completely agree.

Will be pretty interesting how this will look like with the implementations for the new JSF 2.0. The new standard itself is more like RF today ;-)

Well, IF already did it the first time when JSF 1 didn't come with an easy AJAX extension capability, so you can bet that they do it again ... and they will use the new JSF 2 features and will bring us the new IF framework ... it's why JSF was conceived, to allow this kind of frameworks development above it.

I was really attracted to that with IF, but in the end I had to go with RF (not my decision)

When you can decide then give a try to IF more deep, then (as you know more RF) you will take a better final decision.

ICEFaces is a JSF implementation with build-in AJAX extension (and others) integrated completly into the framework, it can use Sun or MyFaces JSF impl, therefore, ICEFaces is a MVC web development framework extended with AJAX. The best part is that it's a powerfull framework and you don't need to write a single line of JavaScripts, just concentrate on Java Development (to build the View and the Control of the MVC patter), and use the components in the framework or build yours. Of course, you need to integrate some sort of technology to build your model, we say: EJB3+JPA, Springframework+JDBC, Springframework+JPA,Java Classes+JDO, Java Clasess+JDBC, and so on.

ICEFaces Ajax Push is an excelent technology to build real-time web application, like auction or bidding systems i.e. This part of the framework is a really powerfull tool in the real-time enterprise web application (where there are events on the server or clients that trigger asyncronus partial update to the other clients connected). Also, the mobile we development is very good implemented in the framework.

I a few words (well, not so few):

GWT: is a "too Googly" ajax framework (imho), very nice but I don't like the idea of turn almost all the Java code into html and JS AJAX (it's not an easy comparation, 'cus diferent concepts). Also, to compare with ICEFaces you need to see into GWT MVC, which is a attemp to expand the framework, building a MVC capable framework above the GWT thenology.

Spring: too xml verbose. DI (and IO) are the heart of Spring, but you can't compare with ICEFaces 'cus Spring have several parts and Spring Web Flow development is not the best part, even implementing a MVC patter. Btw, ICEFaces development has a smoothly integration with Springframework DI (not Spring Web Flow), and if you like it and you can deal with too much xml's configuration, then you can build very good applications. In other words you can use ICEFaces to replace Spring Web Flow and part of Spingframework to develop the core application's services (DI and more).

Struts: Struts 1.x is almost dead, so we need to write about Struts 2.x (WebWork). As we know Struts 1.x changged completly to become Struts 2.x, it was done merging Struts 1.z and WebWork ... and finaly droping most of the Struts 1.x part. Struts, was a "the facto" MVC Web development framework, but it has several problems mainly due to its Page Control Centric approach, when JSF become to the scena, with component and event control (well, the man that make Struts 1, worked on JSF 1 too), then JSF turn into "the facto" MVC web development framework, even more becouse JSF was a standard and was designed to be extensible.

ICEFaces: It's a JSF implementation with build-in AJAX extension (and others) integrated completly into the framework, therefore, ICEFaces is a MVC web development framework extended with AJAX. The best part is that it's a powerfull framework and you don't need to write a single line of JavaScripts, just concentrate on Java Development (to build the View and the Control of the MVC patter), and use the compenent in the framework or build yours. Of course, you need to integrate some sort of technology to build your model, we say: EJB3+JPA, Springframework+JDBC, Springframework+JPA,Java Classes+JDO, Java Clasess+JDBC, and so on :-)

IMHO, ICEFaces is better than RichFaces in almos the whole framework. ICEFaces allows you to concentrate on doing JSF development and, then, build you Business Logic of your application (using everything you know to do that, I like EJB3+JPA btw) instead of be worry about details of the UI layout and integration. Using RichFaces you have more domain of the middle level of AJAX scripting, but it has a cost because you need to worry on the presentation layout too much.

Also, ICEFaces is fully integrated with Facelets and you can forget abut use of JSP at all ... I really love facelets. On RichFaces even though you can do same things you can do with ICEfaces, you need to do more NO productive work to create something. The components into RichFaces looks to be most customizable, but again you need to work even with (x,y) coordinates, i.e.

Another thing I like from ICEFaces is the AJAX Push technology, I never have seen something so powerfull (in that topic) and too easy to configure and develop.