[froden]

Clearly there is something I don't understand about a4j:support here.. The following simple snippet does not rerender the outputPanel. The method myBean.test returns currentTimeMillis.

<h:form id="dummy-form">
  <h:inputText id="dummy-input" value="#{myBean.foo}">
    <a4j:support event="onblur" reRender="dummy-panel"/>
  </h:inputText>
  <a4j:outputPanel id="dummy-panel">#{myBean.test}</a4j:outputPanel>
</h:form>

I'm now using a workaround a la this:

<h:inputText id="firstname" value="#{profile.firstName}" required="true" onblur="forceValidation()"/>
<a4j:jsFunction name="forceValidation" action="#{registerProfile.forceValidation}">

The registerProfile.forceValidation method is simply a void with no functionality.

Regardless, thanks for your replies :-)

[jchouinard]

I use :

<h:messages globalOnly="true" styleClass="message"/>

for global warning and errors (like session time out). You can also use rich:messages to be able to customize its output by changing the styles depending on the type of error you get :

<rich:messages layout="table" globalOnly="true" warnClass="warning" fatalClass="errorMsg" errorClass="errorMsg" infoClass="infoMsg"/>

For validation check, you should use s:message so you get your validations messages with you input.