"Swing and JSF...?" that's usually the first thing people keep asking when reading about the CaptainCasa Enterprise Client Technology. But the idea behind makes sense: JSF is the server server side standard framework for serving client side user interfaces. Typically used for creating HTML pages, it is now used to control a generic, Java Swing based client. CaptainCasa does not introduce a new proprietary server side processing, but bases on the same one (JSF) that you build web applications on.

And Swing? Well first of all, the application developer is not in direct contact with Swing at all when using CaptainCasa. The client is a generic one, i.e. it receives an XML layout specification from the server and sends back events. All is done through http protocol, imagine the client to be a browser on its own. Swing is a candidate which has been around for a while - much longer than "new technologies" such as Ajax & Co; I know several companies running mission critical applications using Swing User Interfaces since couple of years. Main problems typically are: (1) Swing development is not too simple and (2) Swing UIs look a bit old fashionned. Both seem to be overcome with CaptainCasa: as already said, the layout is specified in XML, there is no direct contact with Swing (exception: you want to add a new component on your own) - and: the rendering result is looking very nice! Have a look into the component demos: http://www.captaincasa.com/demozone.html. ...is this really Swing? - Yes, it is!

Regarding the JSF approach: all discussions about this approach could be shut down by throwing in the killer argument „it's a standard...“ but that's not what I'm gonna do here. Instead of this I kindly ask you to google for "jsf success story", which will give you a large list of independent successful JSF projects - this is a much more serious prove for the JSF approach rather than the "standard argument"...

Having proven that each of the technologies, JSF and Swing, are solid proven technologies it should be easy to understand why combining these technologies makes sense. It's just that nobody did this before...

Detailed informtion on the combination of JSF and Swing in the CaptainCasa Enterprise Client can be found here: JSF & Swing

So you want to know how a Swing/JSF application feels like? Make sure you have a Java Runtime plugin installed on your client (Java WebsStart or a JRE), then simply follow this link which will take you to a small demo app: Personal Information Manager

Did you like it? Then you will like even more the way of developing CaptainCasa applications since the whole JSF part is covered from the developer. The developer can focus on the business logic which is the point he needs to hook in. Again, all JSF related stuff is capsulated, so you really can start coding without knowing much about JSF!

For the user interface development there is a nice drag & drop enabled editor which enables developers to create the UI fastly and easily. Please refer to one of the vide tutorials on CaptainCasa, this will give you a quick impression how easily this editor can be used.

In a nutshell, CaptainCasa technology is a great approach from a developers point of view. It is completely based on standards and the standards (which usually are more complicated regarding usage than the non-standards) are ready to use out of the box.

We try to create a killerapp based on CaptainCasa as soon as possible, as we are sure that CaptainCasa is one of the favorites for becoming a solid player in the space of Rich Client development. It's not that a "noisy" rocket technology as Flex, but small rockets can rise high as well..