The Java Community Process (JCP) today approved the JavaServer Faces (JSF) 2.0 specification.  12 of the participating members voted 'Yes' while the remaining four participants abstained. Abstentions included the Apache Software Foundation, IBM, SAP, and Nortel. 

JSF 2.0 adds a range of new features including Ajax support, ease of development features for custom component authoring, improved configuration management, a Page Description Language, and support for JSR 303 Bean Validation.

With the introduction of Ajax into the specification, JSF 2 builds upon important concepts from a variety of existing JSF Ajax frameworks, including a Javascript library for performing basic Ajax operations. According to the JSF 2 Proposed Final Draft Specification:

The library helps define a standard way of sending an Ajax request, and processing an Ajax response, since these are problem areas for component compatability. The specification provides two ways of adding Ajax to JSF web applications. Page authors may use the JavaScript library directly in their pages by attaching the Ajax request call to a JSF component via a JavaScript event (such as onclick). They may also take a more declarative aproach and use a core Facelets tag (<f:ajax/>) that they can nest within JSF components to “Ajaxify” them. It is also possible to “Ajaxify” regions of a page by “wrapping” the tag around component groups.

There are a slew of other new features in this highly anticipated release, which are listed on the JCP landing page for the specification.

DZone will be providing more JSF 2.0 coverage in the coming weeks, including a Q&A interview with the spec leads/participants, as well as a JSF 2.0 Refcard which goes live June 8th.