AJAX Supported in Portal Environments - NEW!
NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Vol. 1 components can now perform AJAX operations such as Smart Refresh™ and AJAX Load on Demand scrolling (see below) within the portal environments of major vendors such as the following:
- IBM® WebSphere® Portal 6.0.1, 6.1
- BEA® WebLogic® 10
- JBoss® 2.4.* and 2.6.*
This is something few other components can muster. We have also made it simple to enable this feature, because you just need to make a simple change in a configuration file to get these portals to work.
Dialog Window Component for JavaServer™ Faces - NEW!
With the release of NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Vol. 1 we are introducing the WebDialogWindow™ component. It bypasses the pop-up blocker installed on the user's browser to display hi-fidelity dialog windows that share many of the features users have become familiar with and come to expect on the desktop. You can use any HTML markup and images within the dialog window's content area and completely customize the dialog's header area. It operates using 100% standards-compliant CSS mechanisms so you can rest assured it will work portably across modern browsers.
The WebDialogWindow UI component is resizable and repositionable by the user at run time, remembers its window state and can be minimized, restored or maximized, and can be modal or modeless (non-modal). With a modal dialog window, you can disable the background goings-on in the browser window until the user deals with the task presented by the dialog window such as a confirmation message box. Modeless dialogs are more suited to foreground windows the user needs to keep around while they work, such as a palette or toolbox in a Web 2.0 diagramming application.
WebGrid Substantially Enhanced!
NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Vol. 1 adds several new and improved features to the WebGrid™ component, the most advanced and interactive JSF data table user interface on the market.
Edit Cells within the WebGrid
The WebGrid component can switch from display to edit mode (and back), allowing you to specify any valid JSF component such as one of the JSF editors included in NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Vol. 1, the WebEditors™. All you have to do is simply include the <gridEditing> tag in your <ig:gridView> and specify a few attributes such as whether editing should commence on any mouse click within the cell or only on double-clicks, for example.
In the above screenshot you see the result of editing a date column of the WebGrid using the date chooser component as a drop down editor. It really streamlines the user experience and reduces the likelihood of improperly formatted dates, especially in Web applications exposed worldwide where date format conventions may vary from user to user.
Multi-Column Sorting
You could always sort automatically on a single column with the JSF WebGrid, but now your users can select multiple columns to sort on simultaneously giving them greater power when they must work online with your data. End users can apply a sort condition to different columns, and the columns will indicate to the user what sort condition is currently applied (for example, a down arrow for descending or an up arrow for ascending).
Load-On-Demand Scrolling
WebGrid now allows load-on-demand scrolling in which it will intelligently make AJAX calls back to the server to receive an additional N rows of data. You can customize the number of rows retrieved each time from the server. If an end user doesn't need to scroll through your entire collection of data then this can save significant time and bandwidth for them because it isn't necessary to retrieve the entire collection of data. The scroll bar will represent the total number of rows in your data set.
Improved Fixed Column Functionality
In NetAdvantage for JSF 2008 Vol. 1 the WebGrid now displays a column indicator (push-pin) in the header of your table, next to the column label. When an end user selects this indicator, the column automatically moves to the left-hand side of your table and there it remains fixed in place (similar to the freeze pane of frozen columns in many popular spreadsheet applications, among others). The column remains in view as the table is scrolled horizontally, making this feature ideal for use when you have a large number of columns, some of which the user always wants to be visible for comparative purposes.
See What's New in Prior Releases
Every release of NetAdvantage for JSF adds value and features onto the release that came before. You can read more about what was new in previous volume releases here or at anytime consult the "What's New" pages in the accompanying documentation.