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| |
| <chapter id="introduction"> |
| <title>Introduction</title> |
| <para> |
| This is the |
| <application>Tobago</application> |
| reference documentation. |
| </para> |
| <para> |
| The goal of Tobago is to create and maintain a well-designed set of user |
| interface components based on the JavaServer Faces ( |
| <abbrev>JSF</abbrev> |
| ) specification. |
| </para> |
| <para> |
| Tobago is more than just a tag library. The following statements |
| characterize Tobago and makes it different from other frameworks: |
| <itemizedlist> |
| <listitem> |
| The focus of Tobago is to create business applications without the |
| need for |
| <abbrev>HTML</abbrev> |
| design. The development of Tobago pages follows more the development |
| of conventional user interfaces than the creation of web pages. |
| </listitem> |
| <listitem> |
| The UI components are abstracted from |
| <abbrev>HTML</abbrev> |
| and any layout information that does not belong to the general page |
| structure. |
| The final output format is determined by the client/user-agent. |
| </listitem> |
| <listitem> |
| A theming mechanism makes it easy to change the look and feel and to |
| provide special implementations for certain browsers. A fallback |
| solution ensures that as much code is reused for new themes as |
| possible. |
| </listitem> |
| <listitem> |
| A layout manager is used to arrange the components automatically. This |
| means, no manual layouting with |
| <abbrev>HTML</abbrev> |
| tables or other constructs is needed. |
| </listitem> |
| </itemizedlist> |
| The |
| <link linkend='architecture'>next</link> |
| chapter will give a short description of the architecture. |
| </para> |
| </chapter> |