JSF Page Structure

The first two lines in the file shown above are common to most JSF pages. They identify the type of the file and its character coding.

Web programmers need to add attributes to the html tag and add content to the h:head, h:body, and h:form tags.

For JSF, the most important attributes of the <html> tag are the xmlns (namespace) attributes.

A xmlns attribute that has no prefix, such as h:, defines a global namespace for tags that can be used without a prefix.
The value string for the attribute (for example, "http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/html") is a URI defining a collection of tags.
A xmlns:prefix attribute defines a namespace for tags that must use the prefix: prefix.

Specifies information about the document as opposed to content that appears in the document. It often has the following content tags.

A title tag specifies a title that is usually displayed in a browser's title bar.
A h:outputStylesheet tag specifies a cascading style sheet (CSS) resource used for styling elements of the page.
A h:outputScript specifies a script, usually JavaScript, to be used by a browser when displaying the page.

Its content can be a mix of plain HTML tags (no namespace prefix), the various types of JSF tags, and text.
It is preferable, and sometimes essential, to use JSF HTML tags rather than similar plain HTML tags.
Reason: JSF manages extra browser-server communication through the JSF tags.

Input elements: command buttons, text fields, text areas, and various selection elements.
Input elements will not work if they are not enclosed in a <h:form> tag.
A <h:form> tag can contain other kinds of tags and text.