JSF implicit vs. explicit navigation
jsf-2
Solution
This is somewhat subjective, but ala, it boils down to the following:
Navigation rules in XML are a maintenance hell.
Using navigation rules suggests that the web application in question suffers from the "one URL behind" problem which causes bad user experience (pages are not bookmarkable).
Using navigation rules suggests that the web application in question is using POST for page-to-page navigation which causes not only bad user experience (pages are not bookmarkable), but also bad SEO (bots don't index POST, hence POST-navigated pages are unreachable for public search engines).
See also:
- How to navigate in JSF? How to make URL reflect current page (and not previous one)
- Bookmarkability via View Parameters feature
- When should I use h:outputLink instead of h:commandLink?
- Communication in JSF 2.0 - Implicit navigation
Problem
I was considering using explicit page navigation rules in my web app when I came accross this SO question/answer, with the following excerpted from it: ...navigation rules are obsolete since JSF 2.0 thanks to the new "implicit navigation" feature. However, I've gone through most of the CoreServlets JSF 2.0 tutorial, and it has a section devoted to explicit page navigation, and it talks favorably about it. Either this goes against the above recommedation, or am I misinterpreting something. I don't want to create a new web app in an obsolete manner. Can anyone shed any light?