An often-touted Java Server Faces (JSF) feature is JSF's ability to approach Web application user interfaces with a component-centric view. A benefit long reaped by rich-client developers, full-fledged user interface components encapsulate their functionality behind component interfaces, and are also easy to integrate in visual design tools.

In the year since JSF became an official part of the Java enterprise stack, several open-source and proprietary JSF component libraries emerged. Sun engineers have contributed to many of the open-source component libraries, initially with the intent of making those components easier to use in the company's Java Studio Creator and NetBeans IDEs.

To enable an even wider use of those components, Sun recently created an enterprise incubator project, Project Woodstock. The project's goal is to provide:

An extensive set of JavaServer Faces (JSF) components for web application developers to build enterprise level applications. These components are fully featured, user accessible and fully localized for 10 languages.

The Project Woodstock components also contain design time code to enable their use in NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5 for easy web application development via dragging and dropping components onto a layout page, allowing the developer to visually organize their application as they build it.

Project Woodstock components range from navigation (Tree, Tab, Breadcrumb) to selectors (ListBox, AddRemove) to date management (Calendar, Scheduler) to a Masthead (with Alarm and Job Status notification) to a Wizard and also a very extensible Table (with sorting, filtering and easy data connection setup).

To what extent do you think high-quality component libraries will change the nature of Web application development?