This JSR will bring the best ideas in web application development (circa early 2007) to the Java EE platform. The Expert Group will be harvesting existing ideas that:

• Maximize the productivity of the web application development experience, for graphical IDE and command-line developers.
• Minimize the complexity of maintenance of the web application during its production lifetime.
• Make it easy to create responsive user interfaces through effective use of Ajax techniques. This includes enabling applications that have nearly all of the MVC controller UI logic and intra-page component interaction into the client, while keeping a sensible level of application logic on the server. Ideas that allow for graceful degredation when JavaScript is diabled or unavailable are also important.
• Make it possible to expand the reach of your web application by continuing to support fully functional server based web applications that do not use JavaScript in the client.
• Leverage modularity to expand integration opportunities between the JSF framework and other client and server side web application technologies. This would make it easier for a developer to use individual parts of JSF without being forced to use all of it. For example, the request processing lifecycle is useful even without the JSF View being present. As another example, JSF has a robust I18N and L10N capability. It should be possible to use this capability without using JSF components for your UI. A short way to characterize this is, "be mashup friendly".
• Make it easy to expose your data by leveraging the Java Persistence API

Requirements are grouped into four major categories: Ease of Development, New Features and Fixes, Performance, Technology Adoption. Following are some initial requirements that will be prioritized and considered when the Expert Group convenes. Not all of these ideas will be in the final specification. Some of these requirements may be met in the Servlet specification (or other Java EE specification) but they are stated here because they are critical to the success of JavaServer Faces.