Web 2.0 user interface features

Learn about new portal features that pertain to the next generation type of Web user interface.

Web technology has recently evolved towards a new direction.

In the public this evolution has been named Web 2.0. This term does not describe a new type of technology, but has been used in a broad manner to describe a change to a more user centered focus. Among the benefits are improved customer and service orientation, increased user activities, easier communication and collaboration, better usability, faster performance, etc. WebSphere Portal v6.1.5 offers several new technical features that can be related to this next generation type of Web user interface as they greatly enhance the portal user experience:

• The portal provides improved performance, as portal pages and portlets are rendered faster, and load is moved from the server to the clients.

• The user experience of the portal behavior is more similar to that of a desktop, as more logic is executed on the client rather than on the server.

• Due to new APIs, developing AJAX portlets becomes easier for portlet programmers.

Within portal, the new features are implemented as follows:

• Web 2.0 portal theme with support for client side aggregation:

  The portal can use client side aggregation (CSA) instead of server side aggregation (SSA). This has the following advantages:

  • Faster rendering and performance

  • Desktop like user experience

  • Existing portlets that were written to the server side programming model can be tied in by using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).

    For example, such portlets can be refreshed individually rather than requiring the refreshing of the whole page

  • The use of the portal Web 2.0 theme for portlets in the portal is optional. Server side aggregation is provided as a fallback option.

    For example, if the browser does not support JavaScript, the "old" portal rendering procedure is still available.

• Client side portlet programming model:

  You can use the client side programming model for your portlets. You can do everything with the client side programming model that you can do with the server side portlet programming model. Additionally, the client side programming model has the following advantages:

  • Improved user experience by faster responses and performance, as many interactions are processed on the client side rather than on the server.

  • User customization of user profile, preferences, and changes to the portlet state are done locally, and therefore with a faster response time. A fragment that contains the customization is later sent to the server and saved.

  • The user experience is consistent between both client side aggregation and server side aggregation. The user cannot tell the difference between CSA and SSA, except that CSA performs better.

• Live text:

  You can use live text. Live text provides elements embedded in portal pages that become active in the browser and are enhanced with additional functionality by JavaScript libraries.

  For example, if you include portal user IDs in your portlet output and mark them as live text, users can click on these IDs in the browser and see a person info card or a context menu that allows them to send a mail to the person. Live text has the following advantages:

  • Live text allows easier click to action.

  • You can adopt new portal content within your company more easily, as it is now easier to handle portal tags.

    For example, you can write tags and make them available centrally, and UI developers can reuse these tags for in their portlets for various purposes.

  • Content editors can add meaningful live text elements to portlets without requiring portlet development knowledge.

  • You can embed content from other sources, for example, from a HTTP or .NET server.

• REST services:

  • Portal now offers the following REST services: Layout model, Portlet model, Content model, Navigation model, Wire model, User profile, composite applications.

  • By the use of REST services you can write your own advanced Web application and build it on top of new REST (Representational State Transfer) services that provide the XML request information.

  • REST services allow you to access portal models remotely for both read and write access. The Navigation model allows read access only; it is updated by changes made to the content model.

• Controller SPI:

  The Controller SPI is a new public portal interface. It is not directly related to the new type of Web user experience, but it allows you to perform certain administrative tasks more easily.

Terminology

These are terms that are used in the documentation for the new features:

CSA

Client Side Aggregation. This means aggregation based on JavaScript and XSLT transformations that are executed on the client.

This is the new aggregation model that provides an improved user experience by faster response and performance.

SSA

Server Side Aggregation. This means aggregation based on JSPs that are executed on the Server. This is the "old" portal aggregation model; this still works as before.

Pure Server Side Portlet

This is a normal server side portlet that uses Java and JSPs; it usually uses no JavaScript. Portlets that are written to the client side model use no or few JSPs.

AJAX Portlet

This is a normal server side portlet that uses lots of JavaScript and AJAX technologies and less Java & JSPs.

DPR

Differential Page Rendering. This denotes the server side rendering model that is used by the Web 2.0 theme. The concept of DPR is to render only those parts of a portal page that were affected by the a user interaction.

For example, if a user interacts with a single self-contained portlet that runs in the Web 2.0 theme, the portal refreshes only this portlet rather than the entire portal page.

REST

Representational State Transfer.

• The client side portlet programming model

  You can use the client side programming model to make use of AJAX techniques in your standard and IBM portlet API portlets.

• HTTP proxy for AJAX applications

  One of the basic technologies that have emerged in the context of the next generation Web user interface is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Using AJAX can increase the responsiveness and usability of your Web applications.

• Live text for click-to-action

  WebSphere Portal supports a live text API for end user controlled data transfer between components. With live text, a component on a page can declare sources and targets for data transfer.

  For example, this can be a portlet or a navigation element. When the user clicks on a source element, the portal displays a context menu listing targets that match the selected source. When a menu item is selected, the portal invokes the corresponding target passing it the source data. This process is called Click-to-Action (C2A).

• Web 2.0 theme

  The portal Web 2.0 theme of the portal provides an improved user experience and better performance. The portal Web 2.0 theme is called PortalWeb2.

Parent topic:

Develop portlets

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