Writing a book is an awful lot of work. People warned me about that, but I wanted to try it anyway. And I learned that it also gives a lot of satisfaction. I wouldn’t have missed the experience! Writing this book wasn’t possible without the help of a lot of people and I want to thank these people.

First of all, I would like to thank my wife for supporting me while I was writing this book. It really means a lot to me how she gave me space to work on this project and helped me relax when I needed to. I would also like to thank my friends and family for their understanding when I had to cancel a party or leave early. And I would like to thank my employer, Transfer Solutions, for giving me the opportunity to write this book partly during work hours.

Of course, I also have a big ’thank you’ for all the Packt Publishing staff that helped in the process. Special thanks to Joel Goveya, who helped me in keeping an eye on the schedule. I also want to mention Gerhard Petracek. He not only did the MyFaces project a big favor by contributing the Extensions Validator project, but he was also of great help when I wrote the chapter on that new subproject. I also owe lots of thanks to the many reviewers who helped me in getting the quality of my writings to a higher level: Cagatay Civici, Anton Gerdessen, Albert Leenders, Kim Mooiweer, Hazem Saleh, Herman Scheltinga, Reginald Sprinkhuizen, Pieter Stek, Peter Vermaat, Matthias Weßendorf, and René van Wijk.