Primefaces > Richfaces
I've worked with both Richfaces 3.3 and Primefaces 3.x and i can honestly say that Richfaces is fucking garbage.
It is extremely buggy and things that should be so simple in JSF just plain don't work correctly in Richfaces and you have to either write some hacky solution or piss away days on trying to get a little things to work correctly.
When i started using Primefaces is when i actually saw the light at the end of the JSF tunnel. Primefaces actually makes JSF nice to write code in.
Primefaces works very well and the documentation is wayyy better because it not only includes the source for the xhtml, but also the source of the backing beans which, for some stupid reason, the richfaces docs don't have.
Don't just take my word for primefaces > richfaces, just look at the forums of both and you'll notice that the richfaces forums are full of unanswered questions from very unhappy customers.
One simple thing that i'd like to point out with Richfaces 3.3 is that your app will simply not work in IE9 and above without adding a meta tag to throw IE back into IE8 mode. What kind of compatibility bull shit is that? Just another reason why Richfaces sucks ass.
Ok i'm done complaining. I hope you get the picture. If you're debating on either of these 2 component suites, do yourself a favor and take my word for it that Primefaces is a much better product than Richfaces.
Oh and if you find some blog about why Richfaces is better than Primefaces, please let me know so i can post examples and put someone in their place.
Written by Tom Caflisch
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4 Responses
Hi Tom,
Guess Richfaces 3.3 and Primefaces 3.x aren't comparable at all. First one was made for JSF 1.2 and Primefaces 3.x requires JSF 2.x.
If you want to compare both frameworks, you can using Richfaces 3.3 with Primefaces 2.x or Richfaces 4.x and Primefaces 3.x
BTW, I've used Richfaces 3.3 (with JSF 1.2 of course) from some years now, and it works almost perfect. Primefaces had some important lack of features (complex Datatables for example) until some recent versions, but now I agree is the most powerful component set for JSF 2.x.
@jgplc Good point about comparing apples to oranges, but i still see some of the same problems that i'm googling about for Richfaces 3.3 in Richfaces 4.x that have not been addressed.
To say that Richfaces 3.3 works almost perfect is a bold faced lie if you do anything with a remote level of complexity to it. For example, have you ever tried to do TRUE pagination with a richfaces datatable and datascroller? There are a bunch of answers on the net that spin you in circles and IF you do end up getting true pagination to work, it's more than double the code as if you would have written a datascroller for true pagination manually.
Also, have you ever used the rich:columns (different than rich:column) with a dynamic number of columns?
As written in my post, probably my biggest beef is that NO apps written in richfaces 3.3 will work with IE9, or IE10. They just flat out don't work unless you add a meta tag to render the browser in IE8 mode (This is a hack and I HATE having to write unnecessary hacks).
Although you have a good point about comparing a JSF 1.2 library with a JSF 2 library, IMHO Richfaces is a poor product no matter what language/version it was written for. It is very incomplete, and the online examples don't even have the backing bean code which compounds users problems.
Hi Tom,
Yep, I could implement successfully true pagination with SerializableDataModel (like here: http://livedemo.exadel.com/richfaces-demo/richfaces/dataTable.jsf?tab=dataModel). Perhaps this should be done using less code (there are many unknown/unused @Override methods that are mandatory to be implemented) but that's another issue...
Yes, I totally agree that Richfaces 3..3 wouldn't work in IE9/10, probably due to the fact of latest Richfaces 3.3 release was some years ago .
I think Richfaces was good enough for production use in 3.3.x versions, but in 4.x there are some lacks of important features (that were available in 3.3.x). In fact, I did change my new JSF 2.x developments from Richfaces to Primefaces. Seems that Jboss let Richfaces with many less resources (people) in the development team.
We used to do it all the time. Primefaces should be irrelevant of deploying to a tomcat server though. I'd suggest you post specifics to your question on http://stackoverflow.com
