The Portal wars continue today as Liferay releases a new UI framework and a migration program for users of competing platforms such as Jive or eXo platform.  Liferay has also added a collaborative web-casting site.  Tomorrow Liferay will be announcing another service that offers cloud-based resource sharing and collaboration.

               
                                                                                                                                                     Alloy UI CSS forms
Liferay is up against some stiff competition with eXo and JBoss working together.  Plus, there's Oracle with seven different portal products after their acquisitions of Sun and BEA.  Developers have a lot of choice when it comes to portal software and opening the doors to many different development platforms is an important attribute for portals to have.  Liferay has a competitive advantage with its Java-based software, and their release tomorrow will also be based on Java.

The newly released UI meta-framework for Liferay, Alloy UI, was developed in collaboration with Yahoo's YUI developers.  Alloy UI has rich UI components that can be used to build portlets, widgets, or web applications.  The UI library will abstract away complexities with web languages and common cross-browser compatibility issues.  The Alloy UI library also doesn't require a portal.  Liferay Portal is going to standardize its front-end framework around Alloy UI, simplifying UI development with its API that builds applications across three levels of the browser: structure, style, and behavior.

The Liferay products also benefit from talented developers that were former Sun/Oracle employees, like Paul Hinz, the former lead on GlassFish.  Hinz believed that it was important for Liferay to make migrations to their platform easy, and well-informed.  That was the reason behind today's “Design with Liferay” program launch.  GlassFish and Sun Web Space Server users could be eligible for a free year of Liferay Enterprise Edition usage.  This would come with 1-3 day onsite technical consultation and workshops for those who migrate.

Finally, the Liferay LIVE site was also announced.  It will be a new channel for sharing community knowledge through live technical video presentations.  The announcement today was made via Liferay LIVE.