The Portlet 2.0 specification as covered by the JCP JSR 286 is now available for public review. The draft will phase in features as this version only specifies a subset of the features that the expert group wanted to include in this release. Other features will be introduced in later editions of the draft. Included in this draft is support for Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) 2.0. Those that are looking for better AJAX support should expect to see that in the next draft. The draft also promised binary compatibility with V 1.0. Other major changes introduced include:

• Additional lifecycle interfaces for events
• Shared session attributes
• Shared render parameters
• Portlet filters
• Based on Java 5

The JCP encourages you to review and comment on the specification.

http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=286

Anyone know why the spec plans to align with EE 1.4 instead of EE 5?

When is jsr goign to look into specifying the look n feel and other personalization techniques. cureently there is too many ways vendors ahev done it and we get locked into the vendor proprietory stuff very easily. It takes too long to understand and use it. Dont go near it if you have over a 100 pages, with lot of personalization to do. We got burnt heavily because of lack of good spec details on look n feel and personalization techniques not being part of jsr. I m sure people will start bashing me now on this - but i stand by my comments and bad experience for last 1 and a half years.

Trying to integrate our jsp/j2ee based CMS with a portal server, the major leak found in the portlet 1.0 api specifications i've found regards the page flow management. The portlet specification 1.0 doesn't include an api set to retrieve the portal page structure (or layout list) and hierarchy, with its url mappings. So it's difficult to write portal server indipendent portlets that manage the portal naviagtion. In a CMS envirorment each module/service requires tipically the page flow management. In addition our CMS embeds into EJB's the logic to build the portal navigation URL's. The portlet 2.0 specification introduces welcome features (like Shared session attributes and Shared render parameters) but i see as a requirement to get from the portal server the url matching a known portal page giving its state (name, attributes, mode). I know that actually there are web frameworks that resolve this MVC matter (like spring web flow, or others), but what about having it embedded into portlet 2.0 api specifications?