Preface

One of the most popular and commonly used web application frameworks today is JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.2. Since the introduction of JSF 2, there are a plethora of component libraries that provide more functionality than that provided by standard JSF components. PrimeFaces is one of the leading component libraries available today.

PrimeFaces not only provides a rich set of UI components, but also has the concept of themes integrated from the beginning. PrimeFaces themes use jQuery UI as a foundation, which makes adapting to the existing or creating completely customized themes a gentle and rewarding process. Because jQuery UI is used to create themes, there is a plethora of documentation and tools available for you to use. This makes working with PrimeFaces themes very easy.

This book is aimed at the developers of Java Server Faces web applications; these applications use the PrimeFaces component library. Together, we are going to have a look at how to use built-in PrimeFaces themes, adjust these themes to fit a particular application's needs, and finally create custom themes for both desktop- and mobile-based web apps. By the time you have read this book and worked on the examples provided in its chapters, you will hopefully have gained valuable insights into the PrimeFaces technology, and especially into how PrimeFaces themes can be used to enrich user experience for your applications.

The practical exercises in the book can be run using any web server that supports JSF2/2.2 and Java 6+. The IDE used for the examples in the book was NetBeans 8.0.1, but any IDE that supports Maven and a suitable web/application server can be used in its place.