ICEfaces 2.1.0 Beta 2 Release Notes

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ICEfaces 2.1.0 Beta 2 Release Notes

November 4th, 2011

Contents

These Release Notes include the following sections:

About This Release

ICEfaces 2.1 Beta 2 is a preview build of ICEfaces 2.1 and is not suitable for production use.

Downloads

ICEfaces 2.1 Beta 2 is available for download in the following formats:

Notable Changes in this Release

In addition to the notable changes listed below this release features substantial stability improvements across the product.

ICEfaces Advanced Components

  • ace:accordion
    • The following component attributes have been renamed in this release:
      • 'onTabChange' is now 'onPaneChange'
      • 'onTabChangeUpdate' is now 'onPaneChangeUpdate'
      • 'tabChangeListener' is now 'paneChangeListener'
    • NOTE: Applications using the old attributes will need to be updated.
  • ace:checkboxButton, ace:linkButton, ace:pushButton
    • Components now support typical passthrough attributes such as "onclick", "onkeypress", etc.
    • Components and markup can now be nested inside ace:pushButton for increased button content flexibilty (ex. Labels with one or more images).
  • ace:contextMenu
    • The contextMenu has been improved to auto-position intelligently based on the available on-screen display space available when it is displayed.
  • ace:dataExporter
    • Has been re-implemented to not require the use of additional buttons, etc. to trigger the export.
      • As a result, the component no longer needs to be inside a UICommand component with <f:ajax disabled="true"/>.
      • NOTE: Applications will need to be revised to adopt the new component usage pattern.
    • The following new attributes have been added:
      • 'label'
      • 'singleSubmit'
      • 'style'
      • 'styleClass'
    • Component has been repackaged from "org.icefaces.ace.component.export" to "org.icefaces.ace.component.dataexporter".
      • NOTE: Applications using component binding will need to have their imports updated. Also, references to the old package name in any mandatoryResource configurations must be updated to reflect the new package name.
  • ace:dataTable
    • Support for n-level nesting of dataTables has been added in this release.
    • New "reorderable=true/false" attribute on ace:column
      • Specify on a per-column basis if a column should be reorderable by the user.
    • Filtered data is now cached rather than being refiltered during each render.
      • Additional component Java APIs have been added to support application manipulation of the filter cache as required.
    • All dataTable configuration settings are now bindable to backing beans for possible persistence across user sessions, etc.
    • Issues related to dynamically updating dataTable columns (changing number of columns) have been resolved.
    • The "pageList" attribute has been renamed to "pageCount".
      • NOTE: Applications using this attribute will need to be modified.
  • ace:dialog
    • Now supports a new "visible" attribute for server-side toggling of the dialog visibility. The previous "autoDisplay" attribute has been removed in this release in favour of the new "visible" attribute.
      • NOTE: Applications should either use the new visible component attribute exlusively to control dialog visibility, or the client-side JavaScript APIs, but not both (per dialog instance).
  • New ace:excludeFromExport Component
    • Can be nested inside ace:dataTable sub-components (ace:column, ace:row, etc.) and components inside ace:column to indicate that a component should not be included in any ace:dataExporter export operations.
    • Provides maximum application flexibilty for data export content customization.
  • ace:expansionToggler
    • Component has been repackaged from "org.icefaces.ace.component.expansionToggler" to "org.icefaces.ace.component.expansiontoggler".
      • NOTE: Applications using component binding will need to have their imports updated. Also, references to the old package name in any mandatoryResource configurations must be updated to reflect the new package name.
  • ace:menuItem, ace:menuBar
    • Dynamic menus are now fully supported.
  • ace:progressBar
    • A new "changeListener" attribute is available specifying a progressChangeListener to receive notifications whenever the progress changes.
  • ace:tabSet
    • New "showEffect" and "showEffectDuration" attributes provide ability to specify custom transition effects to be used when displaying a selected ace:tabPane.
    • Component has been repackaged from "org.icefaces.ace.component.tab" to "org.icefaces.ace.component.tabset".
      • NOTE: Applications using component binding will need to have their imports updated. Also, references to the old "tab" package name in any mandatoryResource configurations must be updated to reflect the new package name.
  • Global usage of JavaScript '$' variable
    • Beginning with this release the ACE components not longer define or use a global '$' JavaScript variable as a reference to the jQuery library instance.
      • This change improves cross-compatilibilty with other 3rd party JavaScript libraries and application JavaScript usage.
      • NOTE: Applications that had been previously relying on the ACE components to define the global '$' variable to jQuery will need to be modified to initialize their own usage of jQuery independently from that of the ACE components.

ICEfaces Components

  • ice:inputRichText
    • The CKeditor Javascript libraries required by the ice:inputRichText component are no longer automatically preloaded with every initial page render. Instead, the mandatoryResource Configuration may be used to specify if the ice:inputRichText resources should be preloaded on the page.
      • There are two methods of configuring mandatoryResources; Application globally via the "mandatoryResourceConfiguration" context-parmeter in the web.xml file, or per-page via inclusion of an <icecore:config mandatoryResource="com.icesoft.faces.component.inputrichtext.InputRichText" /> tag on the page where the component is used.
    • This provides increased efficiency to page loading in cases where the ice:inputRichText is not used on a page.
  • ice:panelTooltip
    • Improved auto-positioning when used in scrollable containers.

Core Framework

  • JSF Navigation Regression
    • A serious regression issue that prevented the ICEfaces Javascript bridge from configuring properly when navigating from an ICEfaces page to another ICEfaces page has been corrected in this release.
  • mandatoryResourceConfiguration
    • The new keyword "all" can be used with the mandatoryResourceConfiguration context-parameter, or <icecore:config mandatoryResource="all"/> tag.
      • Specifying mandatoryResource="all" indicates that all available (on the classpath) component resources should be preloaded during the initial page load.
      • This is useful when an application introduces new components to the page during a dynamic ajax update, and you don't want to specify individual components (which is optimal from a performance/efficiency perspective), such as when debugging more specific mandatoryResource configuration issues.
  • Spring WebFlow
    • Corrected an issue that was preventing ICEface 2 from working with WebFlow when using the ICEfaces Components (ice).
  • Default Error & Session Expired Dialog Styling
    • The default ICEfaces error and session expired dialogs are now stylable via the following CSS classes:
      • "ice-status-indicator","ice-status-indicator-message", "ice-status-indicator-description".

ICEpush

  • Fixed a regression issue that was causing 2 push updates to be sent for each actual update that was occurring.
  • Fixed an issue whereby the Servlet 3.0 ARP timeout could interfere with ICEpush' heartbeat mechanism when used in ARP mode on a Servlet 3.0 compliant server.

MyFaces Support

  • Apache MyFaces JSF 2.1.3
    • This release provides improved support for using ICEfaces with the Apache MyFaces 2.1.3 JSF runtime, including with standard JSF components, ICEfaces Components (ice), Ajax Push applications, and with portlets.
    • NOTE: The Advanced Components (ace) are not yet fully supported on MyFaces in this release. Complete support will be provided prior to ICEfaces 2.1.0 final release.

Portlet Support

  • A regression introduced in 2.1.0.BETA that caused a Session Expired message to appear when navigating between two ICEfaces portlets on a page has been resolved.
  • PortletFacesBridge Updated
    • This release includes an updated PortletFacesBridge library (2.0.2-SNAPSHOT) which is required in order for use with the MyFaces JSF runtime.

Samples & Tutorials

  • Comp-Suite Sample Application
    • A completely new set of ICEfaces Component (ice) demos have been added in this release.
    • New and updated ICEfaces Advanced Component (ace) demos are also included for ace:tooltip and ace:progressBar, and others.
  • MyFaces Support
    • It is now possible to build the sample applications using the "servlet-container" (default) ant target to include the MyFaces JSF runtime libraries in the war using the following ant syntax:
      • 'ant -Dmyfaces="" servlet-container', or just 'ant -Dmyfaces=""'

IDE Integrations

  • NetBeans 7
    • This release provides an updated IDE integration for NetBeans 7.
      • Now requires projects to select the JSF library to use with ICEfaces (Mojarra or MyFaces).
    • NOTE: You must update your NetBeans 7 installation with the latest module versions prior to installing the ICEfaces 2.1 NetBeans integration. See the NetBeans Integration Release Notes for details.
  • Eclipse 3.7
    • This release provides an updated IDE integration for Eclipse 3.7.
      • Features improved design-time renderers for the Advanced Components (ace).
Change Log
For a complete list of all changes in this release, see the related JIRA Change Log.

Known Issues

The following section describes the most commonly encountered known issues with this release:

Wiki Documentation

General

  • JSPs are not supported by ICEfaces 2.0 - use Facelets.
  • It is required to specify "h:head" and "h:body" tags in your ICEfaces application pages.
  • Applications must avoid the use of "javascript: void(0)" in browser DOM event handlers as this technique causes the "onBeforeOnload" event handler to be called in IE, which results in the ICEfaces bridges shutting down (thinking that the page is being navigated away from).
  • The Delta-Submit function does not support cases where an Ajax DOM update in the browser dynamically introduces new form elements into the DOM that were not part of the form when the page was originally loaded. In order to use Delta-Submit successfully all form elements / components must be present on the page at the time the page is loaded.
  • Due to an apparent bug in the Sun Mojarra JSF 2 runtime library, component binding is not reliable when used within a View scope.
    • The recommended workaround is to use the ICEfaces "Window" or JSF "Session" scopes instead if component-binding is required. Alternatively, applications can be modified to avoid the requirement for using component-binding in View scope by using techniques similar to that used in the Data Paginator demo section of Compatible Component Showcase application. For details, see ICE-5226.

Advanced Components

  • ace:columns
    • Not supported in this release.
  • ACE component resource files are not minified or otherwise optimized in this release. These will be optimized to minimize page load times and processing prior to final release.

MyFaces JSF

  • Auction Monitor (w/ MyFaces)
    • AuctionMonitor's chat facility is not currently functional with MyFaces.

Mojarra JSF

  • Note that the Mojarra JSF 2.1.0-2.1.2 releases have several serious issues that may impact your project:
    • A bug that prevents it from supporting bean-annotation on non-Glassfish 3.1 application servers and servlet containers.
    • Several bugs that prevent the IE9 browser from working properly with JSF-ajax operations.
    • Partial State Saving bugs that might prevent the use of Partial State Saving in your application.
  • This release of ICEfaces includes the Mojarra JSF 2.1.3 release libraries which resolves the known issues noted above.
  • When running a JSF application in JSF2 PROJECT_STAGE="Development" mode (which is the default setting for all ICEfaces sample applications), you may see the follow warning appear at the bottom of the page: "Form component needs to have a UIForm in its ancestry.".
    • This issue is caused by a bug in Mojarra JSF, a suggested work-around is to set the JSF2 PROJECT_STAGE="Production" in the web.xml file.

Browsers

  • WebKit (Safari and Chrome)
    • The WebKit-based browsers (Google Chrome and Apple Safari) request content-type "application/xhtml+xml" by default, which is different from virtually all other browsers. In cases where the application page doesn't set the contentType explicitly this can result in these browsers defaulting to a strict XHTML rendering mode, which can cause some unexpected styling and layout issues. In order to have WebKit-based browsers render markup consistently with other browsers, you must specify the content-type in the view tag on each page: 
      <f:view contentType="text/html">
    • See http://jira.icefaces.org/browse/ICE-6138 for more information.

Application Servers

  • Tomcat 6.0
    • In some cases, when running Tomcat on Windows, undeploying an ICEfaces 2 compatible application (i.e. that includes the icefaces-compat.jar) can cause an exception. See http://jira.icefaces.org/browse/ICE-5222 for additional information about this issue. To prevent this, include a context.xml file with your application that includes the following Context attributes to prevent jar and resource locking: 
      <Context antiJarLocking="true" antiResourceLocking="true"/>
    • Comp-Suite Sample Application.
      • The Comp-Suite sample application requires EL 2.2.1, which is not available in Tomcat 6. Tomcat 7 is required.
  • Glassfish 3 / JBoss 6, 7 (JEE 6 Platforms)
    • It is necessary to have Mojarra JSF 2.1.0-FCS or greater (2.1.3 is recommended) installed. This may require updating the JSF Mojarra runtime libraries in Glassfish 3 or JBoss 6, depending on which JSF version is currently installed.

Support

Open source community support is available at http://www.icefaces.org.

Please report any issues, questions, or comments regarding this release to the ICEfaces Development Build Feedback forum.

The ICEfaces community forums are available for questions, comments, or general discussions regarding ICEfaces 2.

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