Avatar as Alternative for Java Server Faces (JSF) and JavaFX? – JavaOne 2012

Project Avatar was announced at JavaOne 2011. After no further information until JavaOne 2012, some new information was announced at this year’s conference. Even a little demo was shown in the keynote. Contrary to JavaFX, Avatar offers the realization of modern web applications without requiring a browser plugin. Web applications are realized with HTML5 and JavaScript (Nashorn implementation) on client-side, and Java EE backend on server-side. Avatar is also suitable for creating mobile applications (smartphone, tablet), because it does not depend on a browser plugin.
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When to use JavaFX 2 instead of HTML5 for a Rich Internet Application (RIA)?

These days, we are starting a new project for realizing a Rich Internet Application (RIA). One of the first questions is: Which technologies and frameworks shall we use? The backend will be Java or another modern JVM language, as we are mainly experienced Java developer. In most use cases, we also prefer web frameworks, which allow to code mostly in Java, as many of us just have basic knowledge regarding HTML and JavaScript. A decision has to be made for the upcoming project: Shall we use HTML5 or JavaFX 2 for realizing the web client? We took a look at pros and cons, which are listed below in this blog post.
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Pros and Cons – When to use a Portal and Portlets instead of just Java Web-Frameworks

I had to answer the following question: Shall we use a Portal and if yes, should it be Liferay Portal or Oracle Portal? Or shall we use just one or more Java web frameworks? This article shows my result. The short answer: A Portal makes sense only in a few use cases, in the majority of cases you should not use one. In my case, we will not use one.
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Lessons learned: SmartGWT 2.3 – Component-Library for Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

I used SmartGWT in our last project (duration: 6 months) – that is a component library for the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). I wanna share my experiences with that component library in the following. I show pros and cons of SmartGWT. Then I explain why I would use only a the client side of SmartGWT in future projects. I used SmartGWT Power 2.3 and GWT 2.0. All information is my personal opinion!
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