Vaadin 7 is being developed as a series of timeboxed releases with around 6-8 weeks reserved for each alpha release. For Vaadin 7 alpha1 we managed to be spot on with the release on Christmas eve but unfortunately this is not the case with Vaadin 7 alpha 2. We have partly underestimated the work needed for alpha 2 and also found out new problems on a weekly basis. These have prevented us from finishing the work as planned.
We do not want to release a semi-broken alpha2 that would disappoint most of you so we have taken the liberty of pushing the release date forward until we feel we have a second alpha version that people can enjoy. We really want alpha 2 to be a useful version, although it is still alpha. We want it to contain great layouts and much better performance than alpha1. We want the RPC and shared state improvements to work so well that you do not even want to think about the paint mechanism in Vaadin 6. We want the client side to be so much easier to use that you want to develop new widgets every day.
We are sorry we could not meet the early March deadline that we were aiming for still at the end of February. Our goal as of today is to get alpha2 out by April 20.