>From: "Craig McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > On 6/23/07, Ryan Wynn wrote: > > I have been thinking about the best way to go about building a wysiwyg > > eclipse editor for jsf views. The only ones I have seen so far create > > jsps. > > I can throw in a couple of thoughts based on our (Sun's) experience > with WYSIWIG editing for JSF views in Java Studio Creator and Visual > Web Pack. > > * The design surface we used started life (many years ago) as a > very hacked version of the Swing HTML 3.2 widget, and nowadays > looks nothing at all like that code. > > * The hard part about rendering JSF components isn't really the > widget itself ... it's the fact that any reasonable JSF component > is also going to assume that CSS can be used. Emulating all of > *that* is not an easy task, no matter how you approach it. (We > do a fairly large percentage of CSS 2, but there's tons of edge > cases -- to say nothing of the fact that you need to decide which > browser's incompatible behavior you should emulate for lots of > these settings.) > > * To say nothing of the fact that, besides support for CSS, your > typical JSF component today is probably also going to assume > that JavaScript and DHTML are also available, so you can build > user interfaces for Ajax enabled applications. >
If you are not looking to build a tool that would work for all design needs, I think that the MyFaces Trinidad components are an interesting option for enterprise developers. They have a predefined css skins that apply application wide. The java script and PPR is built into the library. You really don't even need markup. There is a component for everything. The Infragistics smart client components are very popular amongst the "dark-side" and have the same skinning idea [1]. [1] http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/winforms.aspx#Overview > * Creating Swing components that take CSS, DHTML, and > JavaScript into account is, I suppose, technically feasible ... > but by then you've written a pretty large portion of a web > browser :-). > It's hard to believe that you can get these IDE's for free now. Java Rocks! > * Expecting JSF component authors to write Swing component > analogs for all their components doesn't seem like something > the market would accept very well. > No doubt, even selling JSP tags for this purpose.... > > Craig > > > > > > There are already existing GUI builders for Swing and SWT. Would it > > be possible for Clay to handle a view id which is the class name of a > > Swing or SWT Panel? I suppose it would just need to build a JSF tree > > based on the Swing/SWT tree. Any thoughts on an approach like this? > > > > Ryan > >
