Review: Apache MyFaces Trinidad 1.2 – A Practical Guide By David Thomas

Apache MyFaces Trinidad 1.2 by David Thomas introduces the Trinidad framework and shows how it can be used in combination with the Seam Framework to provide a “comprehensive and effective technology for the development of powerful rich-client web applications”.

The book is comprised of 12 chapters. The first 4 chapters primarily provide useful background information whereas the remaining 8 chapters provide lots of source code examples showing how to use Trinidad with Seam.

In the first few chapters, the author introduces Trinidad and explains why it could be used for development of Rich Internet Applications. He describes several reasons for choosing Trinidad such as the wide range of components (“well over 100”), the framework's interoperability and its maturity.

The author also introduces Seam early on in the book, but there is very little discussion about how to configure and get started with Seam. I think that some prior knowledge of Seam would be useful before reading this book.

After discussing Seam, the author continues to introduce Facelets and its templating facilities. Facelets is a JSF view technology that now a standard technology with JSF 2. In the book however, the author concentrates on JSF 1.x. As with the Seam discussions, I would have liked a deeper discussion on Facelets, but as this is not the major subject of the book I can understand why this is not included.

Moving on, the author begins to discuss Trindad in further detail by discussing the most commonly used tags and attributes for the different components and how Trinidad allows Pages to be partially rendered. Partial Page Rendering (PPR) is Trinidad’s AJAX technology that allows only sections of pages to be rendered based upon events such as button clicks within a web page.

The main detailed content (from a code point of view) begins in Chapter 5 where the groundwork for developing Trinidad / Seam applications begins. This chapter details how Seam applications can be built using the SeamGen tool and then imported into Eclipse. The author shows how to modify a standard SeamGen application to use Trinidad instead of RichFaces – RedHat’s competing JSF component framework.

The remainder of the book provides in depth code coverage on how to use different Trinidad components to build web application. The author describes the Trinidad dialog framework, how to build panels, and forms and how to use many different basic Trinidad components, such as text fields, number fields, trees and tables.

Finally, the author provides details on using Trinidad to generate charts and graphs, wizards and popup dialogs – features that are not available with all JSF component libraries.

This book is a good introduction to Apache MyFaces Trinidad 1.2. Packt Publishing describe the book as being written for “Java Developers who are beginners at JSF and experiences web developers who are looking for an introduction into the world of open source JSF technology”. I would agree with this sentiment, but would also recommend prospective readers have at least a basic knowledge of Facelets and Seam before enjoying the book.

Further information about this book can be obtained from Packt Publishing.

Packt publishing is reaching out to potential authors through Twitter. The @packtauthors account features the latest book ideas, topic areas, author interviews, reviews, and anything else Packt thinks authors and future authors will want to see.

March 12, 2010- Packt launched a new twitter account to tweet about new writing opportunities arising at Packt. Technical people interested in writing technical books are invited to follow @packtauthors.

Most technical publishers expect authors to deliver detailed book proposals, with very little guidance on the sort of proposals likely to be accepted. Packt is turning this on its head by openly proclaiming the sort of topics and titles they’re most interested in right now, and inviting interested authors to get in touch with a simple email.

“We are planning to publish more than 200 books this year and will be inviting authors to write them. We’ll tweet about specific book ideas that need authors, topic areas that we’re looking into, interesting links, and anything else we think authors and future authors will want to see,” said David Barnes, Author Relationship Manager at Packt Publishing. “Follow @packtauthors so you can be the first to discover our latest writing opportunities.”

Writing a book is a great way to demonstrate and share your expertise in a topic area. Packt pays an advance to its authors, as well as a generous royalty of 16%. You don’t need writing experience to write for Packt -- just as enthusiasm for the subject and an ability to put your expertise into words.

The @packtauthors account has already posted about topics such as Python, Joomla!, Drupal, Blender, Unity3D, and Lotus. As Packt continually discover new topics, and new opportunities in our established topic areas, you can expect requests for a wide variety of interesting authors.

Anybody with an interest in writing technical books follow @packtauthors on Twitter, for all the latest author news and writing opportunities:http://www.twitter.com/packtauthors

JBoss Tools 3.1 has been released by the JBoss team and is available for installation into Eclipse 3.5.

JBoss Tools is a set of Eclipse plugins for JBoss and related technologies such as JBoss App Server, Seam, Hibernate or JBoss BPEL. Version 3.1 of JBoss Tools targets Eclipse 3.5 and can be installed into Eclipse from the update site at:

The final release of JBoss Tools 3.1 provides many new features such as support for JBoss EAP 5.x and JBoss AS 6M1. A full list of new features can be found here.