Starting JSPX was a result of many motivations and reasons. We wanted to make our life easier. We wanted something solid and friendly. The time we spent going through many different frameworks searching for something missing, trying to understand misleading error and crashing into many problems. All these things brought out the need for this framework.
FAQs »Developing web application with java was and still immature activity. Although web application development was provided so long ago, the development techniques had never evolved to accommodate the growing need to rich client interfaces. Starting from servlets and passing through JSPs, JSTL, Struts, JSF and even Clay was an attempt to provide a more reliable and fast development for web applications. JSP was just suitable back then, regarding its FOP (Function Oriented Programming) nature. And of course the need for JSTL emerged due to the need for more complex UI like data tables. Struts also was a try to separate the developments units from each other, in order to provide a small development unit that is easy to maintain and sometimes reusable. JSF emerged due the need for standard implementation to provide a fully OOP interface to control the Generated HTML. And even with JSF which is considered imitation of the famous successful ASP.NET, there was many limitations and a big hassle of configuring JSF application, or even getting it started at. Along with that, the totally weird syntax combined with 100% non-Standard control tags. Imagine the efforts required to change a single HTML page provided by the Web Designer into a JSF page!!. Clay came to eliminate this HTML incompatibility just by adding so much freak weird configuration that made everything the worst nightmare when it comes to maintainability and readability. Regarding all these factors, we came to find our own solution that provides the combination of almost every good thing in each framework, and eliminates almost every bad thing. Back in the beginning of 2008 exactly in February, we started the proof of concept. Can we provide some common library that gives our existing servlets the power of accessing the HTML controls declared on the JSP files? Actually providing such integration proved to be the wrong way to look into the whole problem. We thought that we needed something to read the HTML files, make DOM model of the controls and provide OOP java APIs to manipulate the content (the simple task of a dynamic Web Development). Hence we came out with JSPX
We came to the name of the framework as we were very upset at the limited nature of JSPs and Servlets. Hence we thought that this will be a framework that is the next evolution of JSPs JSP eXtende ASP.NET had its name aspx from the same concept ASP eXtended. Actually there are many similarities between JSPX and all of (JSF,ASP.NET) but this is more better regarding many aspects will come to shortly.
All in mind, the desiring need for a framework that smart enough to complete the common tasks of web development and the limitations of the existing frameworks, we wanted to prove that web development in java was not on the friendly track. This framework came to be more Developer friendly, almost near to common logic.
Since the first announcement of this project on java.net, this framework was used in many projects. Some of these projects were existing projects that were built on different technologies like JSP/Servlets and JSF. Some of these projects were new projects that JSPX was used as the main web development framework for them. JSPX was merged into the existing projects so seamlessly, and was perfectly main framework of the new applications. The intended advantaged of the framework was successfully proved. That what gives us the bias to make this very useful framework more used by another developers all over the world.
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