OpenPortal

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 ... [More] 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. [Less]

 SAW an abbreviation for Simple API for Workflow, is LIVE! Check it out here.SAW is an open source effort towards making a generic workflow API scalable across multiple workflow engines. The default implementation will be supported with the Sun Java ... [More] Composite Application Platform Suite.For details, read my blog here. Stay tuned on [email protected] for further announcements. [Less]

Portal Server 7.1 Update1 documents were recently published. Click the image to go to the document collection. 

Thanks to everyone who helped put The Portal Post on Sun's Hot Blogs list!Here's a little something in return: most people don't know this, but you can try many of our most popular portlets (and, sometimes, the back-end services to which they ... [More] connect) for free! For example:Elluminate Live! - 60-day, 25-user free trial of Elluminate's distance collaboration/eLearning environment. It includes app sharing, whiteboarding, collaboration via VOIP and IM, recorded transcripts and much more. We resell Elluminate Live!, and our customers love it! Check it out.  YellowBrix - 30-day free trial of real-time feeds of 130,000 breaking news stories culled daily from premium sources, including the BBC, the Financial Times, USA Today, Washington Post, LA Times, and thousands of industry trade journals and magazines. Sign up today!  Lotus Notes/Microsoft Exchange - Yash Technologies offers free trials of its SyncEx portlets to connect to Notes or Exchange. You want to call them to set that up.877.257.1343 (Toll Free) 847.903.2564 (outside U.S.) e-mail: [email protected], if you need more time to conduct your evaluation, all of these companies are very accommodating. Also, although some ISV's don't publish free trials, if you're seriously considering them for purchase, most will be happy to set you up. Enjoy!Kim Buck [Less]

You've probably noticed we gave this blog a fresh, new look today.  The motivation was to inspire our great content writers, as well as our readers, to touch it.We'd love to hear what you think.  Please feel free to comment on what improvements you'd like to see. As always, we're open to them.

Documentation on the Portal Server community features, community services, and community sample portal is available in the Sun Java System Portal Server 7.1 Update 1 Community Guide. In prior releases, this guide was titled Sun Java System ... [More] Portal Server Community Sample Guide. In the 7.1 Update 1 release, the title as well as the structure of the guide has been changed. The Community Features section discusses how to manage communities, set up community templates, and customize Sun Java Web user Interface Theme. The Community Services section discusses how to deploy and configure the various portlets (such as Wiki Portlet, Surveys Portlet etc.) and includes documentation on the Portlet Application Framework. The Community Sample Portal section provides an overview of the Community Sample portal and areas of customizations to the Community Sample portal UI. [Less]

The fifth article of the running series "Open-Source Portal Initiative at Sun" is out on Sun Developer Network --  JavaServer Faces Technology-Based Portlet BridgeIn the article, Deepak and Marina describe various aspects about the OpenPortal JSF ... [More] 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. [Less]

The Mirage Project site got launched today on java.net. Check it out hereMirage is an open source project which aims to deliver a professional open source content management system based on the content repository Java Content Repository (JCR) viz. JSR-170.You can read more about it at my blog here.

 Including static content in your PortletI wonder if I'm the only one who didn't know how to include and reference static content from a portlet. Recently when writing a portlet I was clueless on what to do when I wanted to include images and a ... [More] CSS file in my portlet. I figure there might be someone out there who doesn't remember this stuff as well; or may be not. But I'll go ahead and post the technique here anyway.To include static content in your portlet, just put your files (e.g., images, Javascript files, CSS files) under the portlet web-application root. To reference them in your portlet use the renderRequest.getContextPath() method. For example, you can include a CSS file like this<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<%=renderResponse.encodeURL(renderRequest.getContextPath() "/style.css")%>"/>renderRequest.getContextPath() returns the web-application path of the Portlet. So for a portlet MyPortlet deployed on your localhost, the method will return http://localhost:80/MyPortlet. Note: Remember to include the following declarations in your page before using the renderResponse object.<%@ page import="javax.portlet.*"%><%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet" prefix="portlet" %><portlet:defineObjects/>Changing Title of a PortletThis is quite easy. Just do the following: renderResponse.setTitle("Portlet Title"); [Less]

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 ... [More] 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 . [Less]