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JavaServer Faces Review by Kelby Zorgdrager
OK Starting Point
This book is an "OK" starting point for someone learning JSF.
Here are some things to be aware of:
1) Does a poor job explaining the lifecycle of a JSF component; he writes the sequence of events out in paragraph style and does not provide diagrams (UML or otherwise) to help with the illustration
2) Constantly switches metaphors as he is explaining JSF; sometimes he will be talking about the implementation view of a JSF component and then other times he will be talking about the application view of a component. It would be better if there were one or two chapters that focused on the "how the heck does this work behind the scenes" and the rest of the book focused on applying JSF.
3) There are syntax errors throughout the examples; this includes the code examples (.jsp examples) and the configuration examples (web.xml and faces-config.xml). To his credit, he constantly references the appendix section for a more complete example. As a reader, I personally don't like flipping back and forth all the time.
4) His coverage of the application (using JSF actions) is very basic (academic). He doesn't go through the academically classified edge-cases, which is disapppointing because those are typically classified as real-world.
5) He forward references way too much; for example he will talk about / use something in say chapter 4, and then states something to the effect "oh, we'll come back to that later, don't worry about it now". From a learning perspective this is terrible. It causes your train of thought to be derailed and you end up asking yourself the question "what does that do?".
On the positive side, the flow does seem to make some sense from a learning perspective. He builds on the foundational concepts and frames the learning in the context of creating a "real-world" application.
I understand this book is a bit out of date (suprises me O'R hasn't encouraged an update). My suggestion is to buy this book used.