The session “AJAX and JavaServer Faces Technology: Natural Synergy” was pesented by Kito Mann, Virtua Inc.

Mann discussed simple ways to add AJAX to JSF applications without needing to know any AJAX or JavaScript coding.  He recommended “sprinkling a little AJAX in” by adding component libraries that already support AJAX.

Here are some of the vendor that have AJAX enabled components, both in the free and commercial markets: Simplica ECruiser, Infragistics NetAdvantage, ICEFaces, QuipUKit, RichFaces, Tomahawk, MyFaces, and Backbase.

Richfaces bundles the AJAX4JSF libraries.  These libraries allow you to wrap any component inside of AJAX without actually needing to know AJAX using the <a4j:support> tag.

Mann showed demonstrations of some of the vendor libraries that provide AJAX “on the inside” like ECruiser, ICEFaces, and NetAdvantage.

Next he showed products that provide support for AJAX “on the outside”.  In other words, these products wrap AJAX widgets from popular libraries like Yahoo and Google into JSF components.  Some of these include jMaki, YUI4JSF, DOJO Faces, and Mojarra Scales.