Is this project still being maintained ?

I checked back in on this framework. Still no luck with the eclipse pluggin and a simple "create new" vaadin project.

It is a rather simple thing to install eclise plugin. 

The designer pluging for eclipse does not seem to work either.

Was just curious if this is an active project  ? 

Yes. The latest stable version 7.5.9 just released 5 days ago.

Did you follow the instruction from https://vaadin.com/eclipse ?
As for vaadin designer, I don't use it so I can't help you with that.

Yes I did. All seemed to work on the install.

When creating a test project which had a popup winow that says:

An internal error occurred during: "Loading descriptor for VaadinTest.".

java.lang.NullPointerException

I mean when creating a Vaadin7 project I should just be able to create then compile / run right ?

Which version of eclipse do you use? java or java EE?

To get started with Vaadin you don't actually need the Eclipse plugin at all (nor plugin on any other IDEs). I suggest to just create a project using vaadin-archetype-application. You can do it with Eclipse wizard or by command line and then importing as existing maven project. Run "mvn install" once and then your can deploy the app with e.g. the pre-configured jetty plugin with "mvn jetty:run".

You'll need the plugin if you wan to try the new Designer, but all basic stuff works fine even with Vi and Maven from command line.

cheers,
matti