Best of GUI , Best of Web

Normally you have to make the choice between having a web-type interface (easy to deploy , but very clunky) , or a richer GUI interface (more interactive , but much harder to roll out , and almost certainly won't work over the internet).

Ajax (Asynch-Javascript-XML) gives you the best of both worlds - a good example of it in action is Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) , where the scrolling and updates are dynamic through *any* web browser. Ajax is a type of application , rather than a framework like Struts of Cocoon.

Ajax type applications will be the way the web is going , and so far the field is wide open as to which framework is the best way of implementing them in Java / J2EE. Whichever wins out is likely to be 'the next struts' ie the defacto standard for Java web development.

2 promising open frameworks are Echo 2 and DWR