Jason, again an excellent summary. I want to start by saying that, just as I recommend in chapter 2 of my book, the seam-gen script goes a long way to getting you setup without needing to lean on an IDE. You can then import that project into an IDE and do the typical
Java and XML editing that you would normally do. The question then becomes, how well is all that extra stuff supported (i.e., EL completion, Facelets tag completion, acknowledgment of Seam components).
Being a Seam guy, you probably expect me to push JBossTools. Of course, JBossTools is going to constantly push to make JBoss software integrate well. But after seeing the video and playing around with the Seam support in IntelliJ IDEA 8, I am truly impressed. Seam is the number one bullet point on their feature list and it shows. Here is a
link to the video. See for yourself.