JSF command links always perform a form submission with JavaScript, which causes problems with the web browser's 'open in new window' or 'open in new tab' feature. To get this functionality in plain JSF use <h:outputLink>, but there are two major limitations to this method:

To solve the first problem, Seam implements the notion of a page action. You can work around the second problem by passing a request parameter and requerying for the selected object on the server-side; in some cases like the Seam blog example application, this is the best approach. As it is RESTful and does not require a server-side state, bookmarking is supported. In other cases, where bookmarking is not required, @DataModel and @DataModelSelection are transparent and convenient.

To replace this missing functionality, and to simplify conversation propagation further, Seam provides the <s:link> JSF tag.

The link can specify only the JSF ID:

​<s:link view="/login.xhtml" value="Login"/>

It can also specify an action method, in which case the action outcome determines the page that results:

​<s:link action="#{login.logout}" value="Logout"/>

If both a JSF view ID and an action method are specified, the view will be used unless the action method returns a non-null outcome:

​<s:link view="/loggedOut.xhtml"  action="#{login.logout}" value="Logout"/>

The link automatically propagates the selected row of a DataModel inside <h:dataTable>:

​<s:link view="/hotel.xhtml" action="#{hotelSearch.selectHotel}" 
​   value="#{hotel.name}"/>

You can leave the scope of an existing conversation:

​<s:link view="/main.xhtml" propagation="none"/>

You can begin, end, or nest conversations:

​<s:link action="#{issueEditor.viewComment}" propagation="nest"/>

Finally, use <s:button> to 'link' rendered as a button:

​<s:button action="#{login.logout}" value="Logout"/>