... if so, then why?

I always believed this to be a strong feature of Seam 2, but haven't found any equivalent in Seam 3 yet.

Are there any technical reasons for this decision, or is rather motivated by lack of time (which I rather don't believe)?

I know that I'm certainly able to compose pageflows through faces-config / navigation rules (the whole non-Seam JSF world does so), but I really liked the ease of defining JPDL-flows and the added benefits of disabled back-buttoning, fine-grained conversation control and separation of concerns (one flow per use case).

So, where did all this go, and what is the recommended practice for Seam 3?

cheers,

Jan