Today, Richfaces 3.1 RC6 has been released. It's not the final, stable version (which was promised for 9/6), but at least you can finally visit Richfaces 3.1 Demos. This is a long awaited version for all of us who use this library because it finally includes a must-have: calendar component.

For those who doesn't know Richfaces, I'll just say it's an Ajax-powered JSF component library, just like ICEFaces. I tried both some months, and I chose Richfaces.

Main new features:

• rich:calendar - until now, a reason to use ICEFaces instead of Ajax4JSF + RichFaces
  
• rich:message and rich:messages, replacements for h:message and h:messages.
• rich:tooltip
• rich:scrollableDataTable

Last but not least, Ajax4JSF and Richfaces have merged. This is good for users (having a library is easier and more comfortable than having two), but it's important from a marketing point of view: they can now say Richfaces has 50+ components, so they can compete against ICEFaces in a numerical fashion. You know, I realize this is just marketing, but this kind of comparisons are important for newcomers.