Bonjour

After getting a taste for writing on the ICEfaces Forums, I've decided to make my own blog, to have as a single place to express my ideas related to ICEfaces. But first, I should explain who I am, and what I do, for this to make any sense at all :)

I work at ICEsoft, where we've got three main products, ICEfaces, ICEbrowser, and ICEpdf. I actually started there working on ICEpdf, which is a Java library for viewing PDF files, that you can embed into your Java applications or applets, say for online help features or whatever. I mostly focussed on adding support for more image types, added the ability to parse the newer PDF file formats which allow for faster incremental loading of PDF files, and a tonne of memory and speed optimisations.

Now I spend most of my time working on ICEfaces, which is an Ajax framework for JSF (JavaServer Faces). Its goal is to transparently add Ajax capabilities to regular JSF applications, where developers just don't have to worry about Javascript or manual configuration of what interactions will update what parts of the page. I've worked in several parts of the framework, most notably in our integration with Facelets, and also as a member of the Component team.

I've always worked on closed source applications in the past, sometimes contributing to opensource projects that my work relied on. So, it's been a new experience working on ICEfaces, where we're actively encouraged to connect with our community. I think that we're pretty privileged in that our community is so strong, helpful, and insightful. Sometimes it's pretty surprising just how superior developing with a community is, over just developing for clients. Hopefully, as times goes by, I'll be able to share those kinds of anecdotes here.