ADF Faces client behavior tags provide declarative solutions to common client operations that you would otherwise have to write using JavaScript, and register on components as client listeners.
Using tags makes behavior much more reusable. All a page developer has to do is drag-and-drop the client behavior tag on the appropriate component and not worry about writing JavaScript and attaching the appropriate client listeners. ADF Faces 11gR1 has a number of client behavior tags and a couple more were added in version 11.1.2. Some examples are the af:showPopupBehavior to disclose a popup or the af:scrollComponentIntoViewBehavior to scroll the page.
Wouldn't it be great if we can create our own client behavior tags for things that ADF doesn't support out of the box? There are a number of blogs out there that describe something like that, such as placeholder watermarks by Duncan Mills and setting the initial focus component by Donatas Valys. Unfortunately those blogs describe how to do this with facelets which requires JDeveloper 11.1.2 We needed a solution for JDeveloper 11.1.1 and thus JSP tags.
Update: A follow-up post is available that explains how to add support for attributes to your custom client behavior.
Update: A follow-up post is available that explains how to add support for attributes to your custom client behavior.
