The Portal Server software system employs a lot of terms some of which are not well understood by everyone. For example, what is the exact definition of a "Portal", or a "Portal Domain", and what about "Portal Server Instance", and so on and so forth.

To unravel this terminology and put it all into context (and more), check out the "Managing Portals and Portal Server Instances" document put together by Prashant.

And if you have any questions/comments, do send a note to users@portal.dev.java.net


 

Basil Fawlty: Manuel, I want you to create a portal using the Sun Portal Server for our hotel
Manuel: Que?
Basil Fawlty: Manuel, a portal using the Sun Portal Server. It's as easy as peeling a Banana.
Manuel: Que? Banana?
Basil Fawlty: Platano, Platano! Ksshhh...forget it.
Manuel: Oh..I see Mr. Fawlty. Install Portal. Si, Si..Que?
Basil Fawlty: And use the Ajax Container for all the pages.
Manuel: Ahax?
Basil Fawlty: Ajax, Ajax! Well, just go to the Spanish version of The Portal Post. You'll find all your answers there.

With due apologies to John Cleese and Fawlty Towers.

 Many thanks to Christian Candia for translating The Portal Post in Spanish. Muchas Gracias!!
 

Recently the JSR 286 draft was released for public review. The list of major changes in this new spec can be found in a previous blog.

In JSR 168, the render parameters set in processAction is only available in the render of the same portlet.

With the new feature "Public Render Parameter", the render parameters set in the processAction of one portlet will be available in render of other portlets also. Using public render parameters instead of events avoids the additional process event call.

See some commentary on the Public Render Parameter feature.

Student: Master, what is Ajax?

Zen Master: Ajax was a Greek hero, but if you tell that to any Java programmer you might become the subject of ridicule. But do not get offended. Ajax today means Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and it is a hero among Web development applications.

Student:  Then, Master, what is Ajax Table Container?

ZM: Answers to your questions are everywhere, but I recommend you read this Technical Note on Managing the AjaxTableContainerProvider.

Everyone knows what is a blog.

 Q: Then what is this Blog Portlet in Portal Server?

A: Blog Portlet allows portal users to manage weblog posts from a portal page. You can create, edit, and delete weblog entries. Additionally, this portlet provides a simplified interface for creating weblogs and weblog user accounts.

Q: This is exciting, I want to read more about this Blog Portlet.

A: Sure you can. We have published a Technical Note on Blog Portlet recently. I am sure it has all the information you want.

In the past few months, The Portal Post has made a lot of progress. We have grown our readership and contributors by many fold. We are now increasing our reach even more with translations into other languages. Thanks to our brilliant team members, Takashi Komazaki and Leon Fan from the Portal L10N team, The Portal Post is now being translated in Japanese and Simplified Chinese.

I have added links to the Japanese and Simplified Chinese blogs on the right hand side menu bar. Hopefully this trend will continue and we'll be able to say Hola, BonJour, Buon Giorno, Zdravstvuite and many more Hellos to The Portal Post readers.

Thanks again to Koma-san and Leon for being the  first.
 

Recently the JSR 286 draft was released for public review. The list of major changes in this new spec can be found in Deepak's blog. One of the new feature introduced in this new portlet spec is "Resource Serving". 

In short, the resource serving feature provides the ability for a portlet to serve a resource which may be protected by the portal security and can leverage portlet context. More details about this new feature can be found in my blog.

The Portal Server Secure Remote Access Gateway attributes can be configured using command-line options (CLI). There are several attributes. To make it easy for those who like the terminal and commands, we have added command examples.

A Portal Server administrator can configure the following SRA Gateway attributes using CLIs:

• To Manage Storage of External Server Cookies
• To Enable Marking Cookies as Secure
• To Create List of URLs for Proxies Not to be Used
• To Manage RuleSet to URI Mapping
• To Specify the Default Domain
• To Manage MIME Guessing
• To Create a List of URI Mappings to Parse
• To Manage Masking
• To Specify the masking Seed String
• To Create a List of URIs Not to Mask
• To Make a Gateway Protocol the Same as the Original URI Protocol

The public review draft of JSR 286 was released recently.  

It includes the following major new features --

• Events -  Enable portlets to communicate with each other through sending and receiving events.   
• Public render parameters - Enable portlets to specify which render parameters they can share with other portlets.
• Resource serving - Enables portlets to serve resources within the portlet context.
• Portlet Filters - Allows on the fly transformation of the content of portlet requests and responses.

 See some commentary on the Eventing feature. The other features will be covered in a series of upcoming blog entires.

The Portal Pack provides a server plug-in for Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 (including Update 1). Using this plug-in you can develop and deploy your portlet application on a remote Sun Java System Portal Server directly from your NetBeans IDE. If you are wondering how to start using this plug-in for your Portal Server installation, you may want to go through the following documents --

• Configuring the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.x Plug-in

• User guide for Portal Pack Plug-in for Sun Java System Portal Server 7
  

Mahipalsinh and Marina have just published a new SDN article titled -- "Configuring Portlets for Internationalization and Localization"

The article uses a sample portlet to describe the procedures for internationalization, localization, and deployment of internationalized portlets on Portal Server. That is, you learn how to display portlet content in various languages and how to add new language support to existing portlets.

Note: for all Portal Server related articles, you can use the "article" tag on The Portal Post.

 
A number of portal server components affect Portal Administration. Checkout this Overview of Portal Administration document put together by the portal administration team which describes various portal server components and their role in portal administration.

Here is a new voice-over screencast that demonstrates the IPC StoryBoard feature for NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1 IDE. In this screencast, I have explained the IPC StoryBoard feature with the help of a fund transfer portlet application created in NetBeans 5.5.1 IDE, following the procedure in Uma's tutorial.

Thanks to Satya, Vihang, and Deepak for providing feedback. I would also like to thank Anjana Rudra for graciously lending her voice and Manu Samuel from the IEC Media design team for the production support.

Watch the screencast and look out for more in the future.

Often people ask me what I do for a living. The work of the user experience person includes a wide range of activities including (but not limited to) -

   - gathering requirements from users
   - developing user scenarios  
   - creating storyboards that illustrate how the product will be used in different scenarios  
   - designing the detailed UI flow and the screens   
   - conducting user tests
Read more in my blog entry Purple People Eater.