WSRP 1.0 beta and Portlet Container 2.0 beta is now available as part of the Java Application Platform SDK Update 3 Beta release.

The Java Portlet Specification, 2.0 (JSR 286) adds new features like events, public render parameters, resource serving, and portlet filtering to the Portlet Specification, 1.0 (JSR 168). Portlet Container 2.0 Beta provides a preview of these new features as defined in the JSR 286 Public Draft 1.

You can download the same from here.  Here are some links to related resources

• Release Notes
• Installation Instructions
  

The Portal Pack 2.0 Beta (NetBeans Portlet Plug-in) is available as a separate download that helps developers to develop, deploy and test portlets onto the Portlet Container 2.0 Beta.  

Currently, the web designers design the portal's look and feel via a web based UI -  which they may not be entirely comfortable with.

Wouldn't it be nice if portals provide a method by which the designer is able to use professional web design tools that he is already familiar with to create a beautiful looking portal.

Well, now its possible. For more details on how, click here.
For screencasts on how it can be done, click here.

This feature is available as part of Portal Server 7.2.

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.

 [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/

A new version of Eclipse Portal Pack is uploaded on the Eclipse Portalpack site.

To learn how to use this new version to easily add portlet action support to your portlet visit my blog.

A new version of Eclipse Portal Pack is uploaded on the Eclipse Portalpack site. I have tried to add support in this version for handling actions in portlets easier. The plugin can be downloaded from the Documents and Files sections of the Eclipse Portalpack site.

View the announcement here and try it out. You can also read more about it and how to use this new version on my personal blog.

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.

I was invited to present portal at the Java CAPS Apostles Conference last week @ Singapore. This conference involves Sun Partners, Sales folks around Java CAPS, some around Portal, Java CAPS System Engineering, Partners and Solution Architects who are responsible for customer implementations, POCs, RFPs etc. The  conference usually highlights features of Java CAPS and things being done around it by other products.

This was an opportunity to showcase things being done around the Portal product, Portal around JavaCAPS integrations, NetBeans tooling.

For details regarding what all was presented, which hands on exercises were done, what CDs were distributed, please check out my blog. The conference concluded on a very positive note, giving great food for thought to everybody about integrating Portal with Java CAPS.

As indicated in an earlier posting, one of the main features of the future Portal Server 7.2 release will be the Desktop Design Tool. 

The Desktop Design Tool will be an easy to use tool for portal administrators to design and customize a portal page's layout and theme.

To give a preview of this upcoming feature, I have recorded a screencast that shows how this tool can be used for adding new content, changing the layout of the page by rearranging  tabs and channels, and finally, changing the theme of the page.

Check out the screencast here -- Portal Desktop Design Tool Screencast

Here is a netbeans plugin developed for writing workflow portlets. This plugin not only demonstrates the ease of coding workflow portlets but also uses an extensible API for performing workflow.

Check out the Netbeans plugin for Developing Workflow Portlets

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.

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.

The Portal/Portlet marketplace continues to expand and gain momentum worldwide (* as estimated by Industry Pundits). The developer ecosystem is an instrumental part of that growth. To mirror that, and help fuel it further, the Sun Developer Network Hub for Portal Server has been redone from ground up to appeal to a wide audience of developers that are interested in all things related to the world of Portals and Portlets.

It now has information, resources and pointers right from the latest on the Sun Java System Portal Server product-line, the Enterprise-class Portal Open Source Project that is gaining momentum on java.net, to the latest advances in Portlet technologies/standards, to information about the next generation Portal/Portlets Tools (including those from NetBeans), and more..

So calling one, calling all,  check it out  -- http://developers.sun.com/portalserver