We now have the JSF Portlet Bridge jars available on the java.net maven2 repository.

If you use Maven2 to build JSF Portlet webapplications, you can reference the JSF Portlet Bridge library in your pom.xml as shown below. After the war is built, it will contain jsf-portlet.jar

So insert the following into your pom.xml --

Under <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>maven2-repository.dev.java.net</id>
            <name>Java.net Repository for Maven</name>
            <url>https://maven2-repository.dev.java.net/nonav/repository</url>
         </repository>       

Under <dependencies>
      <dependency>
            <groupId>com.sun.faces.portlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>jsf-portlet</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.1</version>
            <scope>compile</scope>
      </dependency> 

The current versions are 1.2.1 and 1.1.5

Portal Server community administration can be done from either the Portal Server Management Console or through command-line interface (CLI). 

For the Portal Server 7.1u1 release, the command-line utilities for community administration was consolidated into a technical note.

 Each entry has the command (long and short formats), description, syntax, and options.

Instructions to administer communities from the Portal Server Management Console is available in the online help.

A technical article is now available in BigAdmin on administering Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) for Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 written by Sunil Bhaskaran. You can also find this information in a WSRP chapter in the Sun Java System Portal Server Administration Guide.

Another technical article by Rajesh Thiagarajan and Marina Sum, in a four part series titled Open-Source Portal Initiative, "describes the WSRP Project's system and deployment architectures, its build and deployment processes, and the procedure for creating remote portlet windows."

 [Click image to see enlarged view]

The past two iterations of work on the Portal Server Admin console have been an interesting journey in design work.

We started by teasing the Portal Server Console out of the Identity Console. Endless meetings with white boards filled with diagrams of everything that needed to be presented to the user in the console, and how they should be grouped. Denim was my friend those days. At the end of all this we had a spanking new console with a navigation scheme that had a good amount of "scent". What is scent you say? It is a concept that Jared Spool uses, and that I happen to like. The idea is that a well designed website should let users know that they are on the right track. The 7.0 console had the ability to lead you to the area that you wanted to go, and to find your way back there with ease the next time you wanted to.

The next iteration of work was adding the Visual Display Design Tool. A Direct Manipulation Interface that lets the Administrator interact directly with what they are working on - a portal page. This advances the UI further along the continuum of task awareness (note: I did not say task based, task centric etc.. I should blog sometime about my reasons for avoiding those terms...). One of the unique tools in this round of work was comics to tell stories. It was a lot of fun to do, and was a lot more effective in ensuring a shared understanding of the work. Plus it was a lot of fun to put together!

Cross Posted from : http://blogs.sun.com/realDesign/

As part of the OpenPortal project we strive to make the UI as visually appealing as possible and Portal Server 7.2 is full of advancements in this area.  Why?  We want you to touch it, feeling connected to your portal services.

That means we do a ton of browser testing via our great QA team to ensure our UI is consistent across browsers.

And now thanks to Parallels with Coherence,  UI development and testing should be a whole lot easier.  With it, I can run all the major browsers simultaneously and see changes instantly without switching machines/keyboards.

Just one small thing we do to help ensure a better user experience for you. 

Highlights of this build are support for Sun Application Server 9.1, GlassFish V2, integration with SAW, Mirage, AES encryption for SRA,  new consolidated sampleportals and much more.

Checkout Getting started with OpenPortal and follow the Install Instructions and Release notes to try the latest B5 build.

Quick FYI -- The tag cloud / top tags section on the blog has been moved to the top on the right nav bar. Also, the tags for each entry on the blog have been reviewed and refreshed. We hope that the tags now better serve locatability of the desired topic/content. 

Any comments/suggestions to further enhance the experience on this blog most appreciated.

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 OpenPortal project has an entry on the Ohloh web site for tracking information related to the OpenPortal community. This includes information about committers, code size and makeup, and licensing. If you use software from any of the OpenPortal projects, please add OpenPortal to your stack on Ohloh. We would also welcome any user reviews.

Information is now available on BigAdmin on post-installation configuration issues and solutions for the Secure Remote Access (SRA). This documentation has a list of common issues that occur after installation of the SRA and tips to solve them.

Click here to read the troubleshooting guide.

Click to join portlets

If you are a portlet developer and/or user (or for that matter, in the business of building and/or using the infrastructure that serves as the runtime environment for portlets and more, i.e. portal servers) and are not aware of the Portlets Group at Yahoo!, you should consider checking it out.

The description on the group site states "This group is created with the objective of discussing portlets and related technology, their usability and problems associated with them. Portlets related technologies, standardizations and specifications like JSR 168, Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP), and JSR 170 (JCR) are some of the discussion issues. Though there is no restrictions, you can discuss anything related to portlet..", as well as "..Popular open source and commercial portal servers can also be discussed here..".

The group was founded in November 2003 and today has an impressive membership roster of 5800+ individuals.

Sun Java System Portal Server has been recognized in the "Best Portal Platform" category in the recently announced SYS-CON SOA World Reader's Choice Awards for 2007. Read the full announcement here.

Overall, Sun has won several top awards, including for the Best Application Server (read more commentary on The Aquarium).