Which framework should I choose - Seam, Wicket, JSF or GWT? [closed]

Answer 1

In a long term scenario I'd recommend using technologies backed by a Sun specification. This has so far proven to give multiple implementations resulting in choice (frequently also open source implementations), plus behaviour tends to be very well defined.

That will help you in a maintainance scenario, which - hopefully - your code will end up too in time. Well-written code lives forever :)

In this particular scenario I would suggest JSF. I have only tried the Apache implementation of 1.1, but it hurt to be on top of JSP. We are to revise it soon - I expect to look into having JSF on facelets.

Answer 2

I started with JSF (1.1 and 1.2) and it was so painful that I decided to change in next projects. I researched a bit and I decided to try Wicket, and it was so a pleasure. Also I've tried JSF 2 but is still the same thing.

Both of them are component frameworks, but things with Wicket are easy while with JSF are a complete mess.

Wicket over JSF:

• In Wicket HTML are HTML. JSF has its own mark-up tags. The h:dataTable (for tables) is nonsense. Believe me, Sun Engineers had to be drunk when designed it.
• In Wicket things like security,
• With JSF the navigation bar shows the previous URL. Really odd.
• JSF seems to me very heavy, and with libraries like Rich or Prime even more.
• Sometimes, it seems impossible to know which is happening. You always end up yelling at your computer because you don't know why JSF is doing.

JSF over Wicket:

• In Wicket you're going to write more Java (the binding with HTML). At least, your IDE will provide refactoring and validation support.
• Resources management in Wicket is a bit tricky.
• There are much more documentation and support for JSF

One common flaw is that session size is are problem (because graphical components are stored in there).

All in all, if you have to decide only between Wicket and JSF there not doubt for me, Wicket.

Answer 3

If you consider only job market , you should choose JSF. But, I belive that the future of RIA belongs to GWT and gwt like client side technologies.

I think that the most obvious upside of GWT, it is better scaleable than server side presentation layer technologies such as JSF, wicket. Because , server does not need to store client state and the client cpu power also are also used.. It is a huge benefit, you dont need to serialize client state between server computers to achive fault tolerant system.

Answer 4

Thanks wicket guys for remaining sober and keeping over this discussion. I am a wicket user and i love it. My main reasons are :

1. Its a component framework. I love working with components as opposed to full pages.

2. I can let the designers work on the templates and pages as i work on the java parts

3. There is nothing new to learn. Its "just java and just HTML"

4. I like its ajax Fallback mechanism. Where there is not javascript support on a browser especially on mobile devices, it falls back to plain html and everything works.
5. Its lack of xml configuration is a plus
6. It supports everything i would want in a web application. e.g validation, internationalization, back button support and restful URLs among others

My previous experience is GWT and JSF 1.0

Answer 5

Seam is an application framework, not really a presentation layer. It was originally developed to make JSF less painful, but has evolved into a more general purpose dependency injection framework.

I believe that you can use Seam with JSF, Wicket and GWT. JSF support is primary and excellent; I'm not sure how well the other two are supported.

Since the focus of your criteria seem to be the marketability of your skills, I would suggest trying out Seam and JSF via Facelets. JSF is a well accepted standard and is actually enjoyable to use if you are using Facelets. You can have slick AJAX functionality via Richfaces and Ajax4jsf. Seam is being more or less standardized via the JCP.