ICEfaces 3.0.0 released

Enterprise-ready and open source RIA development framework ICEfaces has received a landmark release this week, with the introduction of ICEfaces 3.0.0.

Part of the ICEsoft Technologies team’s portfolio of tools, ICEfaces aims to add a bit of zest to developing web-based applications, by bringing an air of simplicity and enhancements to the Rich Internet Application framework. It does this through bringing in some new RIA component suites like:

• ICEfaces Advanced Components (ACE) – The newest
• ICEfaces ICE Components – Ideal for older applications and older browsers
• ICEfaces Enterprise Components (EE) – A commercial component suite of specialty composite components

This release brings the tally of ACE components to over 40 components, some improved and new ones including an industry-leading new ace:dataTable, support for jQueryUI ThemeRoller themes, and a flexible new ace:ajax tag and client-event support. Crucially for some, there’s also integration for Eclipse’s IDE (3.6 and 3.7) and NetBeans (7.0, and 7.1), hopefully making a seamless transition with bigger IDEs.

You may be thinking that ICEfaces application development is done in JavaScript, but it is essentially Java EE JSF development, which promotes a component-based architecture using familiar tag-based declarative UI definition. The team says that “ICEfaces provides application developers with a familiar Java Enterprise development model that completely shelters them from the complexities of low-level Ajax development in JavaScript.”

There’s new support for MyFaces JSF, over 400 other enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes. For full in-depth details on what’s new in ICEfaces 3.0.0, check out the release notes.