For all the details please check out my blog - http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/RichFaces400Alpha2Released

RichFaces 4.0.0.Alpha2 has been released, and the project is moving into a new phase! We had a lot todo on our way to this milestone, not only did we add new features, and components, but also made many general improvements. The core functionality, build system, and CDK features were redesigned to make framework development more convenient for RichFaces developers and community contributors.

Some highlights in RichFaces 4.0.0.ALPHA2:

• Redesigned and improved Component Development Kit
• Ajax core components set almost completely migrated.
• Ajax request smart Queuing mechanism implemented
• Rich Data Iteration components created
• Skinning including standard control skinning feature was migrated.

You can download all the release artifacts at the RichFaces download page, and review the release notes. The distribution readme.txt in the richfaces-4.0.0.ALPHA2 file contains all you need to get started and integrate the library into your application. If you are using maven you can follow the wiki instructions: How to add RichFaces 4.X to Maven Based Project.

Our next release will be 4.0.0.Milestone1 (M1), and is the first of the time-boxed milestone releases. For M1 we will be releasing right around July 20th, with future milestone releases about every month, until we are ready for the final 4.0.0 releases.