5. Composite View Design Enhancements

Documentation > Facelets > Design View > Composite View Design Enhancements

Since Facelets is based on the Composite View Design Pattern, it's easy to create pages from reusable elements such as headers, footers, navigation menus, sidebars, and so on.

Facelets makes it easy to demarcate certain sections of a page as reusable content that can be included by other pages (or Facelets). Additionally, Facelets allows you to define content to be inserted into another Facelet using special tags to pass values between pages.

Facelets Tools fully supports Facelets composite view design and renders included Facelets, compositions, decorations, and templates in Dreamweaver as they would normally appear in the browser.

Compositions

In Facelets, a UI Composition is a tag that surrounds a section of content to be included by another Facelet. Any content outside the UI Composition tag is removed from the page.

This tag can be used effectively in Dreamweaver to create content elements that can be shared across different pages. It also has the benefit of acting as a container for child components that can be attached to the JSF component tree.

Facelets Tools provides multi-mode support for the UI Composition tag and allows you to view Facelets UI compositions in Dreamweaver as they would appear in your Web browser.

Decorations

In Facelets, the UI Decorate is tag that surrounds a section of content to be wrapped by another Facelet. Any content outside of the UI Decorate tag is displayed on the page.

Facelets Tools renders Facelets UI Decorate tags in Dreamweaver's Design View as they would appear in your Web browser, allowing you to experiment with different UI designs without the overhead of leaving your design environment.

Templates

Several Facelets UI tags support the option of being associated with a template. In Facelets, a template is a document that contains markup to be included by another Facelet, and a "template client" is the document that includes a Facelets template.

Facelets Tools Professional supports Facelets templating and saves you time by allowing you to associate and edit a template with a Facelet quickly and easily through file browsing controls on Facelets UI property inspectors.