ICEfaces Offers a Novel, Pure Java Approach to the Rich vs. Thin Dilemma

ICEfaces Offers a Novel, Pure Java Approach to the Rich vs. Thin Dilemma: "ICEfaces Offers a Novel, Pure Java Approach to the Rich vs. Thin Dilemma
Fat, thin, fat, thin. As the pendulum of distributed application architecture prepares to swing back toward fat, one vendor offers a thin client solution that uses Java Server Faces to get around tricky HTML and Javascript issues.

by Laurence Moroney August 24, 2005

When it comes to their GUIs, distributed applications have always observed a pendulum effect. The early enterprise distributed application comprised a heavy centralized server with a dumb terminal for data entry. As the personal computer evolved, the model changed; increased power at the desktop led to heavier and more sophisticated client applications. But the need to maintain such high computing and presentation power on the desktop led to a huge increase in the costs of deployment and management of such applications.

When the Internet, and in particular, the Web browser came along, the pendulum swung back toward a centralized model with a thin client. While this certainly helped with the cost of managing large scale systems, it came at a cost—that of user experience. A Web-based application, designed and implemented in HTML, cannot match the user interface experience of a desktop application. Various add-ons to HTML, such as JavaScript, can improve the experience, but these solutions can be onerous and expensive.

Today, it would appear that the pendulum is poised to swing back again, evidenced by the advent of heavy client APIs including the Windows Pr"