We've released JSF Portlet Bridge 1.2.1 and 1.1.5. The changelog contains issues resolved as well as any new features added.

If you find any issues or have any feedback for features, etc., please let us know!

To know more about JSF Portlet Bridge, you can read the article JavaServer Faces Technology-Based Portlet Bridge

The JSF Portlet Bridge Project is making steady progress. Late last year the project released JSF Portlet Bridge 1.2 which enables running JSF 1.2 applications as portlets in the OpenPortal Portlet Container. The project team is currently improving on that implementation.

   I would also like to welcome a new member to the project -- A. Alonso Dominguez, from Social Labs NetSolutions.  He is actively contributing to the implementation of JSR 301 in the project. JSR 301 is the Portlet Bridge Specification for JavaServer Faces Technology. It standardizes the behaviour of bridge implementations to ensure true interoperability for JSF artifacts. See the JSF Portlet Bridge Project for more details.

The fifth article of the running series "Open-Source Portal Initiative at Sun" is out on Sun Developer Network -- 

JavaServer Faces Technology-Based Portlet Bridge

In the article, Deepak and Marina describe various aspects about the OpenPortal JSF Portlet Bridge Project which develops the integration library that enables JSF technology-based applications to be run and deployed as JSR168-compliant portlets, including it's design philosophy, the procedure for modifying JSF applications to comply with the JSR168 specification (illustrated via a sample application), and the Portlet Bridge's tag library.

If you are thinking of a simpler way to write the shopping cart example from my previous tutorial, check out the new IPC Tutorial. This explains how much easier it is now to drag and drop events with the help of StoryBoard .

StoryBoard is the new Feature introduced in the Portal Pack 1.3 Beta. Right now it provides tooling support for InterPortletCommunication for JSR 168 portlets. The tool will be enhanced in the future to enable support for the Eventing feature of JSR 286 portlets.

Also, checkout Satya's blog to  know more on IPC StoryBoard .

The Portal Pack 1.3 Beta is now available for download. It has a new feature IPC Story Board which provides  tools support for the Eventing (also referred to as Inter-Portlet Communication) feature supported by Sun Java System Portal Server/OpenPortal Portlet Container.

This version of the Portal Pack is supported on NetBeans 5.5/5.5.1. Check out my blog for a tutorial on how to use this new feature in your NetBeans IDE.

    The OpenPortal build has started to consume the OpenPortal Portlet Container binaries on the fly :) This just goes to show how modular the Portlet Container itself is, and how easy it is to consume it. Moreover, it provides for innovation to happen in pieces. So contributors to the Portlet Container can continue to contribute knowing that it is not going to be just part of a server side component, but it will be part of an enterprise level Portal implementation.

The Ivy dependency management tool is being used to manage the dependency on the Portlet Container. This is part of the OpenPortal component based architecture, and is thus providing fruitful results. For instance, if a developer just wants to check out the portlets to test for compliance or to just get a feel of how it might look and work, the OpenPortal Portlet Container, which provides the runtime environment for Portlets, can be downloaded and used easily. The same can then be deployed on the enterprise class OpenPortal knowing that it will work fine, since the OpenPortal is just bundling the same Portlet Container that you tested on. Similarly other components will be consumed on the fly thus providing the level of flexibility yearned by everyone in the open community.

So, if you are still on the fence about the OpenPortal community, just be careful, for the fence is becoming thinner and there is a good chance that you will be forced to jump over it to our side very soon :)

Sang Shin, from JavaPassion.com, and also a Sun technology evangelist has released a brilliant new tutorial on Building Portlets with Ajax behavior. This tutorial comes with a hands-on lab and covers everything from installing the right plugins in your Netbeans IDE to deploying your portlets in the OpenPortal Portlet Container. A couple of portlets he uses in the lab are from the OpenPortal Portlet Repository.

If you have been waiting for some good information to get your hands dirty with Ajax and Portlets, then it won't get any better than this. And if you happen to build any exciting portlets, be sure to contribute them to the OpenPortal Portlet Repository for others to use!
 

The OpenPortal Portlet Container provides a custom way to perform eventing between portlets. I have created a NetBeans plugin  demonstrated in the EventingDemo which depicts how easy it is to write portlets which generate and consume events.

The NetBeans plugin with the upcoming Netbeans 6 release, makes it easy to drag and drop the Java code for the portlet to generate/receive events. It also introduces appropriate XML entries in the custom xml file required by the Portlet Container.

The OpenPortal Project  will soon have a Content Management System (CMS)  infrastructure and an open CMS out of the box . This CMS, currently implemented as a Document Management System  is JSR170 (JCR standards) compliant and uses Apache's Jackrabbit and Object Content Mapping (OCM) .

  The interesting part is that Document Management  functionality is exposed via tag libraries where the tags can be dragged and dropped in the portlet page and developer can have his/her own  CMS presentation . For this we have the NetBeans plugin . Check this out in the CMSDemo . This CMS solution is in progress and we plan to enhance it further for Article Management, Jobs Management and Ad Management.

The latest stable nightly binaries of the Portlet Container and WSRP projects are now available, These binaries are tested against each other for any integration issues.

This Portlet Container stable binary fixes integration issues over the milestone 1 release to support WSRP.  So if your intent  is to use WSRP functionality over the Portlet Container, it is recommended you download this binary rather than the milestone 1 binary.

For more information please refer to the download page. This page also has links to the install and user guides for the respective projects.

Deepak and Marina have put together an article on the Enterprise-Class Portlet Container Open Source Project titled --

Part 3 : Open-Source Portal Initiative at Sun : Portlet Container

This article describes the Enterprise-class Portlet Container Open Source Project and Portlet Container 1.0 release milestone recently developed in the project. Also explained are the procedures for installing and deploying Portlet Container 1.0 release milestone and how to test portlets.  Finally, it also explains the motivation behind the project and how other projects, tools and environments can benefit from it.

Here are the links to other articles in the same series

• Part 1 : Open-Source Portal Initiative at Sun : Overview
• Part 2 : Open-Source Portal Initiative at Sun : Portlet Repository
  

Wesley and Marina have done a complete refresh of the popular "Introducing Java Portlet Specifications.." article. It now not only covers the Java Portlet Specification 1.0 (JSR 168), but also takes a peek at the ongoing work on the upcoming Java Portlet Specification 2.0 (JSR 286).

In addition, it walks through a sample Weather Portlet tying together leverage of the Portlet Repository Project, the Portlet Container Project, and the NetBeans Portal Pack Project.

So check it out -- Introducing Java Portlet Specifications: JSR 168 and JSR 286

Portlet Container 1.0 FCS is now available as part of the Java Application Platform SDK Update 3 Preview release. You can download the same from here.  Here are some links to related resources

• Release Notes
• Installation Instructions
• Screencast: Learn how to deploy and test portlets using the Portlet Container
• Article: Understanding the Portlet Container 1.0 Software and Deploying Portlets

The Netbeans Portlet Plug-ins help developers to develop, deploy and test portlets on to the Portlet Container 1.0.  There are new versions of the Portlet Plug-ins that are now available that work with the above Portlet Container version. The Netbeans Portlet Plug-ins are available as the part of  Java EE 5 Tools Bundle Update 3 Preview.

Checkout Deepak's  and Satya's blog for more details.