Icesfaces vs Myfaces vs Primefaces

Question

I am starting out a new project that involves the use of JSF 2.0. From my initial reading, the Mojarra and Apache Implementation of the project covers the basic components that

Answer 1

I have successfully used JBoss RichFaces on a large online B2B store. RichFaces is a quite good framework for building webapps Web 2.0 style, and have easy to use tags that help you develop features faster.

I do not have any metrics regarding performance between RichFaces and IceFaces/Primefaces, but the ease of development should be approximately the same. All three frameworks have similar components, and they are all working towards more and more logic on the client via JavaScript.

At the current state of the JSF libraries, I am fairly sure that you will be happy with whichever framework your choose. IMO RichFaces and IceFaces are the two frameworks that have been around the longest, and i would put my bet on one of these two. IIRC both frameworks have key developers in the JSF design group as well.

As a general rule of thumb, these framework should work interoperably, but I wouldn't mix and match between them. The frameworks are really ment to be used on their own.

Answer 2

I happily use Primefaces as it is by far the most rich set of open source JSF2 controls out there, but they can be infuriatingly buggy at times. It is best to operate under the assumption that component X will not work correctly in a dialog without heavy tinkering.

I would avoid Primefaces if you operate in a development environment with strict UI design requirements as getting everything exactly the way you would like it to look and operate may not be a possibility.

Further I would avoid Primefaces if you are not comfortable with JSF, HTML, JQuery, JavaScript and CSS as you will need a good bit of JQuery trickery to work around the bugs that crop up.

But on that note, I haven't run into a problem yet that a couple lines of custom Javascript haven't fixed for me, and I have one of the most feature rich applications I have ever wrote in the shortest amount of time.

Answer 3

There is one thing against Icefaces: a lot of components and functionality are only available in the Enterprise version, which is commercial, not free (but that might as well be a good thing since you get support etc. if your project can afford it).

Why not play with all three libs for a short time, build a simple project and see how you are getting along with either of them. My personal taste prefers Primefaces, but I haven't tried Richfaces since it turned JSF 2 ready.

Answer 4

The speed of development is very fast in this area, and any article gets outdated quickly. I used Primefaces for a new project almost a year ago, because at that time it was the only one that was fully compatible with JSF 2 (both Icefacves and Richfaces have had JSF 2 compatible releases in the meantime).

Primefaces has a lot of powerful components that automatically use AJAX, and even more were added in version 3. Unfortunately this focus on new features led to a lot of bugs, but the developers said they would focus on bugfixing after release 3; I can't say anything about the current status since I left the project after 3 months.