Hallo Sebastian,
Freut mich.
I'm a member of the JSF2 expert group, and would be glad to answer any of your questions!
"What is your favourite feature or concept of JSF 2, what is unique as compared to other things, what is an eye catcher?"
1. Composite Components -- The ability to create fully reusable components with zero java code required whatsoever. This is called "EzComp", which has sped up my development by about 400%.
2. Built in Facelets support for Templating -- never re-write HTML, you can re-use every piece of every page if you want to.
3. Built in AJAX -- specify components to submit, and components to re-render when the request has been processed. Very easy to use, plug & play, no javascript required (but may be used if desired.)
4. Entire pages of the site, not just components, can be packaged in their own jar files and included in the main application. No more massive WebContent directories.
5. Improved community participation -- We are actively seeking feedback from the community, and trying to get as much feedback and discussion as possible in order to make JSF2 the best possible solution it can be.
[b]Notable extensions[/b]: (And a shameless plug... more than just another component library.)
PrettyFaces --
http://ocpsoft.com/prettyfaces (I'm the author) -- this extension allows for bookmarkable, SEO friendly URLs in JSF. URLs like "/home" or "/store/SuperSeller/item/S2432Z345I9". PrettyFaces can then parse out values and inject them directly into the application's managed beans (either into JSF, or Spring, or another Bean manager. "/store/{{SuperSeller}}/item/{{S2432Z345I9}}" -->SuperSeller and S2432Z345I9 could be extracted and injected directly into the model. Action methods to process that information would then be called.
[b]Dev Blogs[/b]
You can see more examples of JSF2-specific features on my website:
http://ocpsoft.com , and on the JSF developer blogs:
http://blogs.sun.com/rlubke/ is a good one.
http://andyschwartz.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/whats-new-in-jsf-2/ will give you more information than you can use. And of course, the various posts on
http://ocpsoft.com
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