Okay, cheesy title. I admit it. But you have to check out Wicket. It really rocks. Now, I don’t really have anything against Struts (and its 507 configuration files), but it seems like web development shouldn’t have to be so god-danged hard. And I think the folks on the Wicket project are moving in the right direction. I know HTML, and I know Java, and that’s pretty much all it takes to bang out some pretty impressive web pages. And they’re secure. And they look good. And best of all there’s no configuration files. If I want messages to appear, I put them in a properties file that corresponds to my wicket page, but how is that different than any resource bundle? I don’t, however, have to edit four or five different configuration files (and get all of that configuration in harmony) just to add a screen (or, hell, even a field in some cases).
Wicket is cool. You should totally check it out. Maybe I should write a book about it. Anyone want to help?