What seems like a very interesting presentation from the tech lead for JSF:
TheServerSide Java Symposium 2005. The description:
The need for a common API for Java-based web application user interface components was obvious – by the time that the Java Specification Request (JSR) for this API was started, there were over thirty open source and commercial libraries that covered all or part of this functional space. JSF’s goals included gaining consensus on a common API for building interoperable components, but it was also more aggressive in its goals: it was also to be the leading edge of a movement towards making Java APIs easier to use, as well as easier for tools vendors to create high quality design time experiences around that API. We will briefly review the history of JSF, and examine the ecosystem around this API, plus talk about what might be useful in the future.