ICEfaces® Enterprise Edition 1.8.2 - Beta Release Notes November 6th, 2009

Overview

This document contains the following sections:

• Changes in ICEfaces Enterprise Edition 1.8.2 - Beta
  
• Migration Notes
• Supported Platforms
  • Java
  • Browsers
  • IDE Tools
• Known Issues
  
  • Documentation
  • General
  • JSP Markup
  • ICEfaces Component Suite
  • Portlets
  • Sample Applications
  • Application Servers
  • ICEpack
    
• Support
• About ICEfaces
• License information

Changes in ICEfaces Enterprise Edition 1.8.2 - Beta

ICEfaces Enterprise Edition (ICEfaces EE) 1.8.2 - Beta is a preview release of the upcoming ICEfaces EE 1.8.2 certified release.

ICEfaces EE is a commercial software product that extends the ICEfaces open source project to provide additional advanced enterprise features, professional support options, and platform certification against a wide range of proprietary and open source application servers and Java EE middleware. For more information on ICEfaces EE, see the Wiki.

Review the Known Issues prior to using this release. Review the Migration Notes if you plan to use an existing ICEfaces 1.7.x application with 1.8.x.

Please report any issues with this release to ICEsoft customer support.

ICEfaces Changes Since ICEfaces 1.8.2 (open-source)

• [ICE-3915] - Cannot create PanelCollapsible component programmatically, receive ClassCastException
• [ICE-4567] - Receiving NoSuchMethodError exception when adding <f:convertDateTime> to an iceface component using JSF 1.1.5
• [ICE-4971] - ice:panelDivider causes JS error when used in Liferay portlet in IE
• [ICE-4988] - Sortable dataTable header (commandSortHeader) not aligned correctly in IE8
• [ICE-4994] - Menu state not reset after menu is hidden when with displayOnClick="true"
• [ICE-5006] - Limit individual users to a maximum number of views
• [ICE-5013] - ice:columns creates 1 extra <td> element than number of <th> elements when table is empty, as a result table renders badly
• [ICE-5017] - IE8 Layout issue of Download Resources on component showcase
• [ICE-5018] - OutputResource component consumes memory when hashcode of the resource is changing
• [ICE-5038] - Jarred Facelets Templates are continuously refreshed
• [ICE-5048] - dynamic images showed using graphicimage do not refresh
• [ICE-5050] - tabChangeListener tag memory leak
• [ICE-5061] - Empty ice:graphicImage URL creates unnecessary views

ICEpack Changes Since ICEpack 1.8.1 Beta

• Enterprise Push Server (EPS)
  
• All-new support for clustered fail-over of ICEfaces push applications when using EPS.
• Clustered fail-over is supported on the following platforms in this release:
• Tomcat 6.0 + ActiveMQ 5.3
• JBoss 4.2.3
• WebLogic 10.3.2
• WebSphere 6.0.2

• ICEfaces Composite Components
  
• The following new facelets composite components have been added to the ICEfaces Composite Components in this release:
• editableTable
  
• filterTable
• richDataGrid
• dynamic dialog
• textSpinner
• selectLocale
• selectOneStateProvince
• richTabs
• tabView
• slideshow
• schedule
• selectDateInterval
• Load Test

• Load Testing
• The protocol used between the ICEfaces core and Javascript bridge has changed since the 1.8.1 release, as a result, the Load Testing examples and documentation have been updated to work correctly with the ICEfaces 1.8.2 EE bridge.
• Any load testing scripts previously created based on the ICEpack 1.8.1 release will need to be updated. Note that using the older load testing scripts with ICEfaces EE 1.8.2 may result in a failure of the dispose-views functionality, causing views to incorrectly remain in memory for the life of a session.

• Samples
• The ICEfaces Composite Component Showcase sample has been updated to include examples for each of the new composite components added in this release.
  

Migration Notes

The following changes may affect applications that were originally developed with ICEfaces 1.7.x.

Asynchronous ICEfaces applications should be deployed with the new Push Server

• Asynchronous ICEfaces applications (push) should now be deployed with the new Push Server.
• If you deploy more than one asynchronous ICEfaces application to the same application server/host-name and view more than one of these applications in a single browser (via multiple tabs or windows), the push updates only function correctly for one of the applications. This restriction is due to HTTP 1.1 connection-limit recommendations that many browsers enforce. Changes in 1.8.0 make this issue more prevelant on all browsers than in previous releases.
• Note that the Push Server MUST be deployed when using any ICEfaces asynchronous portlets.
• See the "Push Server" section on pg. 74 of the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for more information.

Asynchronous HTTP Server (AHS)

• The ICEfaces Asynchronous HTTP Server (AHS) is no longer supported with ICEfaces 1.8.0. 
• If your application was previously configured to use AHS you will need to deploy the new Push Server with your application instead.
• See the "Push Server" section on pg. 74 of the ICEfaces Developer's Guide for more information.

Session Renderer API Repackaging

• The SessionRenderer API was introduced as an experimental API in ICEfaces 1.7.1. Based on positive feedback from the community it has been repackaged and is now an official API. If your application uses the SessionRenderer it will need to be updated to reflect the new package name. 
• Former package-name (experimental): org.icefaces.x.core.push.SessionRenderer.
• New package-name (official): com.icesoft.faces.async.render.SessionRenderer

ice:inputFile Component Changes

• The behavior and features of the ice:inputFile component have changed to better support indicating progress without requiring as much application-level code. 
• In previous ICEfaces releases, a technique of using the ICEfaces push APIs (e.g. PersistentFacesState.renderxxx(), RenderManager, etc.) to push progress updates to the browser was used. In this release this technique is unnecesary and deprecated. The specific case of using the PeristentFacesState.render() API can cause nested JSF lifecycles to occur which can cause unpredictable results.
• See the ice:inputFile TLD documentation for details.

Glassfish Grizzly ARP Support

• If you would like to leverage the Glassfish Grizzly ARP mechanism with ICEfaces 1.8.0 you must include the new "grizzly-compat.jar" in your project classpath. This jar is located in the "../icefaces/libs" directory.

Supported Platforms

Java

ICEfaces is supported on the following Java versions:

• JDK 1.4 and greater
• MyFaces and Sun JSF 1.1 runtimes
• Sun JSF 1.2 runtime

Note that ICEfaces 1.x is not supported on JSF 2.0 runtimes. ICEfaces 2.0 is targeted at JSF 2.0 runtime environments.

Browsers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apple	Safari	4.0
Google	Chrome	3.0
Microsoft	Internet Explorer	6, 7, 8
Mozilla	Firefox	3.0, 3.5
Opera	Opera	9, 10

Mobile Browsers

Vendor	Product	Platform	Version
Apple	Safari	iPhone, iPod Touch	1.x, 2.x, 3.x
Opera	Opera Mobile	Windows Mobile	8.65, 9.21b2
RIM	Blackberry	Blackberry Bold	All

Application Servers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apache	Tomcat	5.5, 6.0
BEA Systems Inc.	WebLogic Server	8.1, 9.2
JBoss Inc.	JBoss Application Server	4.0.5, 4.2.x, 5.0
IBM	Websphere Application Server	6.0.2, 6.1, 7.0
Oracle	WebLogic Server	10.3.1
Oracle	Oracle Application Server Container for J2EE (OC4J)	10.1.3
SAP	NetWeaver	7.0
Sun Microsystems	GlassFish	v2.x, v3 Prelude
Sun Microsystems	Sun Java System Application Server	8.1, 9.x
Webtide	Jetty	6.1.x

Portal Containers

Vendor	Product	Version
Apache	Pluto	1.1.4
Apache	Jetspeed 2	2.1.3
BEA	WebLogic Portal	10
Liferay	Liferay Portal	4.3.x, 5.x
RedHat	JBoss Portal	2.6.x

IDE Tools

ICEfaces IDE integration bundles are available for the following development tools:

Vendor	Product	Version
Eclipse	Eclipse/Web Tools Platform	3.5
Genuitec LLC	MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench	7.x
IBM	Rational Application Developer (RAD)	7.5
Sun	NetBeans	6.5, 6.7

Note: Tool integration bundles may be updated independently from ICEfaces releases. Refer to
http://downloads.icefaces.org for the most recent tool bundles and associated ICEfaces runtime libraries.

Note: ICEfaces can generally be used with any Java IDE that supports JEE 1.4 0 (+JSF) and JEE 1.5 projects. If a specific ICEfaces integration is not available for your IDE, ICEfaces can be manually included into your project classpath. See the ICEfaces Tools forum and Tutorials for more information on using ICEfaces with a variety of IDEs.

Known Issues

The following section describes the most commonly encountered known issues with this release. For a complete reference of all outstanding issues please refer to the ICEfaces.org JIRA issue tracker.

Documentation

• ICEfaces Developer's Guide


• In the "Busy Indicator" section on pg. 32, and also in Appendix B on pg. 116, it incorrectly states that the "com.icesoft.icefaces.blockUIOnSubmit" configuration parameter is "TRUE" by default. In fact, this parameter is "FALSE" (disabled) by default.
• To clarify the "Push Server" section in "Chapter 5 - Advanced Topics" section on pg. 74 - the Push Server MUST always be deployed with asynchronous ICEfaces portlets or the push functions of these portlets will not work.
• The usage example in the Bridge Connection Status Events section in "Chapter 4 - ICEfaces Reference Information", on pg. 28 is incorrect. The corrected usage example is noted below:

<body> 

... 

<script type="text/javascript"> 

 Ice.onSessionExpired('document:body', function() { 

 alert('Session has expired!'); 

 }); 

</script> 

... 

</body> 

• "Appendix B - ICEfaces Configuration Parameter Overview". The following new configuration parameters have been added since the 1.8.0 release:
  • 'com.icesoft.faces.checkJavaScript' - true(default)/false.  Disables the active test and error message that ICEfaces normally performs/displays for JavaScript support in the browser. Disabling the JavaScript test may improve search engine consumption of content in some cases. Note that JavaScript support is still required in order for ICEfaces applications to function properly.
  • 'com.icesoft.faces.ignoreUserRoleAttributes' - true/false (default). Can provide significant performance improvements in ICEfaces applications that do not require the use of the 'renderedOnUserRole' or 'enabledOnUserRole' attributes. Note that this configuration is implemented statically. 

General

• If at any time the asynchronous connection between the browser and the server is lost due to a network interruption, reloading the page will generally restore normal operation from the previous application state.

• ICEfaces pages included via <jsp:include> or <tiles:insert> have distinct PersistentFacesContext objects even if they are included by the same parent page. For this reason, application-initiated renders will apply only to the inclusion associated with the particular PersistentFacesContext.

• Inclusion of ICEfaces content from JSP is not compatible with MyFaces.

• Attempting to retrieve a Request parameter in the url using the following syntax is not supported (returns null):
     FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestParameterMap().get(paramName);
  A workaround for this issue is to retrieve the Request parameter using the following alternative syntax:
   ((HttpServletRequest)FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest()).getParameter(paramName);

• Cookies can be set though the ((BridgeExternalContext) FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext()).addCookie(new Cookie("test","test")); method.

• If you are using the Sun JSF 1.2 RI and experience the following exception:
  "javax.faces.application.ViewExpiredException: viewId:/xxx.iface - View /xxx.iface could not be restored. at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RestoreViewPhase.execute(RestoreViewPhase.java:xxx)"
  It may be necessary to include the following configuration in web.xml:
  
  <context-param>
   <param-name>com.sun.faces.enableRestoreView11Compatibility</param-name>
   <param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

JSP Markup

• UIComponentBodyTag processing supports only a single call to doAfterBody(). The full JSP lifecycle for iterative body processing is not supported.

• The first-generation children of the DataTable's table-header and column-header facets must be standard JSF components. For example, plain markup cannot be contained on its own within these facets, it must be wrapped in a panelGrid and the panelGrid, in turn, can be contained within the facet.

• JSP Page to Document conversion escapes &nbsp, but &nbsp in JSP Documents must be manually escaped by the developer as &amp;nbsp. Similarly, & characters must be escaped as &amp;.

• Non-JSF JSP tags (<jsp:xxx/>, etc.) embedded in JSP Pages and Documents are ignored by the ICEfaces parser with the exception of the inclusion mechanism (see Markup Reference in Developer's Guide for details).

• Java code (<% ...%>, etc.) embedded in JSP Pages and Documents is ignored by the ICEfaces parser with the exception of the inclusion mechanism (see Markup Reference in Developer's Guide for details).

• Input documents must be well-formed XML.

• Deprecated HTML elements, specifically the FONT element, do not respond properly to DOM manipulation functions in the ICEfaces client-side JavaScript bridge. (see HTML 4.01 Specification for details on deprecated HTML Elements).

• Pages should contain both a <head> tag and a <body> tag so that they are well-formed XHTML and ICEfaces can easily add a link to its own custom JavaScript library.

• Any ICEfaces page included from a JSP via <jsp:include/> must contain a <body> tag as the content of the <body> tag is precisely the content inserted into the including page.

• Tiles tags are not supported within ICEfaces pages, but ICEfaces pages may be included via Tiles.

• If multiple ICEfaces inclusions are performed by the same parent JSP, each ICEfaces form must have a manually applied unique ID.

• JSP Pages are dynamically converted to JSP Documents for processing by the ICEfaces parser, so it is important not to mix JSP Page and JSP Document types when performing static inclusion.

• UTF-8 encoding must be used for all source files for ICEfaces (jsp jspx, etc.)

ICEfaces Component Suite

• All ICEfaces Component Suite components must be enclosed in a JSF form component (i.e. ice:form, h:form, or ui:form).

• Effects (various components)
  • In Internet Explorer the Fade, Appear, and Pulsate effects will not transition when used with select elements.
  • In Safari the Highlight effect will does not work on buttons and lists.

• gMap 
  • Requires an API key which must be obtained from the Google Maps website.
  • Client browser must be able to access the Google Maps website URL (http://maps.google.com)

• menuPopup
  • menuPopup is not supported in the Opera browser due to a browser security feature that prevents the override of the browser's own context menu.

• inputRichText
  • The FCKeditor JavaScript library that is the basis for the ice:inputRichText component does not currently support the Opera browser.

• outputChart
  • Negative values are not supported in "barstacked" chart-types. This is a limitation of the krysalis.jcharts library used to generate the chart images.
  • When using the ice:outputChart component with IE6 the following warning log messages may appear in the ICEfaces server log:  "java.net.SocketException: Connection reset by peer: socket write error". This is the result of IE6 closing connections abruptly and is a browser quirk. It has no impact on the functionality of the component.

Portlets

• The following ICEfaces components are known not to work correctly in a portlet environment:
  • ice:gMapDirection
  • ice:inputRichText - using this component in more than one portlet on a page may cause problems with the functioning of this component.
  • Drag & drop (via ice:panelGroup) - using drag-and-drop in more than one portlet on a page may cause drag-and-drop to not function in some of the portlets on the page.

• When using ICEfaces with Liferay Portal positioning problems may occur with components that rely on dynamic positioning, such as ice:panelPopup, ice:menuBar, and menuPopup. This issue is related to an aggressive styling behavior in Liferay and there is a work-around identified. See ICE-2967 for details.

• Liferay 5.2.x automatically compresses all resources being served by the Portal container. By default this will conflict with ICEfaces automatic resource compression. When running with Liferay 5.2+ it is necessary to either disable Liferay's resource compression, or disable ICEfaces resource compression by specifying the "com.icesoft.faces.compressResources=false" configuration parameter setting in the web.xml file.

• The ICEfaces Component Showcase portlet sample application may have styling and layout related issues related to the specific portal container and portal theme being used. The primary intention is to show component functionality in a portlet context. It may be necessary to customize the specific styles being used to work well within the portal theme, etc.

Spring WebFlow

• In Spring WebFlow 2.0.5+ there is a ViewHandler delegation issue that prevents the logic that determines whether a view is restorable from working correctly resulting in the flow being continuously restarted. A workaround is to define a Spring FlowViewHandler in the application faces-config.xml file. 


<application>

<view-handler>com.sun.facelets.FaceletViewHandler</view-handler>
<view-handler>com.icesoft.faces.facelets.D2DFaceletViewHandler</view-handler>
<view-handler>org.springframework.faces.webflow.FlowViewHandler</view-handler>
<variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver</variable-resolver>

</application>

Sample Applications

• Of the four varieties of the Component Showcase application (jsp, portlet, portlet-enh, and portlets), only the facelet-enh version includes the Description and Source tabs for viewing documentation and resources related to the  components being demonstrated.

• The Component Showcase enhanced facelets sample application  (icefaces/samples/component-showcase/facelet-enh) requires JDK 1.5 to compile and run. All other samples in this release require JDK 1.4+.

Application Servers

• General

• Due to an apparent bug in Tomcat 5.x, users have occasionally reported seeing the following error when using ICEfaces with Tomcat 5.x or JBoss 4.0.x: "SEVERE: ICEfaces could not initialize JavaServer Faces. Please check that the JSF .jar files are installed correctly." This issue can be resolved by including the following listener in the web.xml:
  
  <listener>
    <listener-class>
       com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener
    </listener-class>
</listener>

• Apache Tomcat v5.5

• Tutorials bundled with the ICEfaces release will not build and deploy to Tomcat 5.5 with MyFaces due to a conflict related to jsp-api.jar.  To build and deploy tutorials on Tomcat 5.5 with MyFaces, it is necessary to modify the .../install_dir/ICEfaces-1.5/icefaces/samples/tutorial/build.properties and set tomcat55=true prior to building the application.

• Apache Tomcat v6.0

• To use ICEfaces with Tomcat v6.0 these jars that are included in the ICEfaces distribution must be removed from the web application (note that the sample application build script target for Tomcat 6 will include the correct .jars in the .war file):
  • el-api.jar
  • xercesImpl.jar
  • xml-apis.jar

• Tomcat v6.0 / JBoss 4.2 with NIO Connector

• When using the optional Tomcat 6 NIO connector (can also be used with JBoss 4.2) with asynchronous ICEfaces applications a NullPointerException can be thrown when using the TomcatPushServlet (located in the com.icesoft.faces.webapp.http.servlet package) due to Tomcat recycling objects that are still in use by the TomcatPushServlet. The issue seems to be timing related and is more apparent with multiple users.
• Workarounds for this issue include not configuring the optional Tomcat NIO connector and configuring the ICEfaces Enterprise Push Server for NIO asynchronous communications instead.

• Sun Glassfish v2.1

• Due to a bug in the JSF RI included in the Glassfish v2.1 distribution (v1.2_04), exception redirection may not work correctly with ICEfaces. The work-around is to install or use Sun JSF RI 1.2_05 or newer.

• BEA Weblogic Server 9 & 10

• In order to run ICEfaces on the BEA Weblogic Server 9, the html and core tld files located in jsf-impl.jar should be extracted from the jar file and placed into the WEB-INF folder of any application you want to deploy.
• When deploying an ICEfaces application that uses the ice:inputFile and/or ice:dataExporter components to WebLogic 9 or 10 you must use an exploded directory copied to the domain's autodeploy directory, rather than simply using .war files or using the console. Otherwise, the file-write operations these components depend on will fail (as there is no writeable directory in a .war file).

• Websphere Application Server 6.0.0.1, 6.1

• Websphere requires a special class-loader configuration for use with ICEfaces. See the Application Server Deployment Guides in the ICEfaces knowledge-base for details.

• A bug in the application server prevents the Timezone Step 3+ tutorials from running correctly. A WebSphere patch is available from IBM that resolves this issue: APAR numberPQ99195, http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180&uid=swg1PQ99195.

ICEpack

• EPS
• The Enterprise Push Server does not integrate with JBoss 4.2.x, Tomcat 6, or WebLogic 10.3.2 ARP (Asynchronous Request Processing) mechanisms in this release. Support for ARP-optimized push is planned for future releases.
  
  

• Samples
• The clusteredChat1 and clusteredChat2 samples have only been tested successfully on Tomcat 6.0 w/ ActiveMQ in this release.
  
• When using the timezone-failover and timezone-failover-push sample applications together with EPS, you must manually specify the com.icesoft.net.messaging.properties configuration parameter with the correct setting for the target application server in the application web.xml. This will be included automatically by the sample build in the final release.

Support

Please report any issues with this release to ICEsoft customer support.

About ICEfaces

ICEfaces delivers extensions to Java ServerFaces (JSF) that provide an AJAX-enabled rich presentation environment for JSF applications. ICEfaces brings value to any Java EE development project that needs to provide superior presentation capabilities to the web application user. In particular, ICEfaces provides the following features:

• Smooth, incremental page updates that do not require a full page refresh to achieve presentation changes in the application.
• Server-initiated asynchronous presentation updates for dynamic instantaneous data push (Ajax Push/Comet).
• The ICEfaces Component Suite, a complete rich JSF component suite that fully leverages ICEfaces capabilities.
• Intelligent form processing that facilitates fine-grained interactions with the user as they manipulate a form.
• API support for rapid development of group-aware and collaborative applications, such as Chat, Webcast, social apps., etc.
• JSP or Facelets based development.
• Tool integrations for leading Java IDEs.
• Support for leading Java EE frameworks, such as Spring and JBoss Seam.
• Support for portlet development.

Learn More

This ICEfaces release comes with extensive documentation that will help you understand the product thoroughly. Documentation for this release is located in your installation directory at .../install_dir/icefaces/docs/. The following documents are provided in PDF format:

1. ICEfaces Getting Started Guide: This guide takes you through product installation, environment configuration, demo app installation, and a basic 7-stage tutorial. This guide also contains information related to support for different application server environments and development tools.
2. ICEfaces Developer's Guide: This guide contains information relevant to developing applications with ICEfaces. It describes the ICEfaces architecture, and explains key concepts that the ICEfaces developer should be aware of. It also provides a complete reference guide that covers APIs, configuration, components (including the ICEfaces Component Suite) and TLDs, and covers advanced topics like server-initiated rendering.

ICEfaces documentation is also available on-line at http://documentation.icefaces.org/.

License Notice

License agreements can be found in the .../install_dir/icefaces/docs/license directory.

© Copyright 2005-2009 ICEsoft Technologies, Inc.