I've been working with JSF on a large project. I have experience of working with JQuery, normal HTML/css/javascript, GWT and Gxt. And I can tell you that JSF is the worst of the bunch. If you like your back-end code to be separate and independent of your front-end code then JSP is not the way to go. It littery ties your front-end to your back-end with no clear separation of concerns. The other problem with JSF is that it is very hard to get your head around. Creating great AJAX pages in using frontend technology (e.g. javascript, html and css) is very easy. My 14 year of son gets taught how to do it at school. Getting the same effect using JSF is incredibly complicated. Take a look at how to define as link:
Configuring your build and runtime environment is also a pain. There are so many inter-dependencies among jar files that if you don't have the right combination of JSF, Richfaces, and Spring Jars, then you have no hope of getting your application even out of the build build environment. If you want to get a hint at this then go to the maven search site and look for the class javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot. Everyone and their dog has it. Also take note at the javax.faces and com.sun.faces - what's the difference? Who knows, but they don't work together. And some version only work with specific version of RichFaces.
My advice - stay well clear. Give your app a spring back-end and a normal HTML front-end. There is no way you can write a decent large enterprise scale application in JSF. It would be just too complicated. You'll end up with a huge monolithic code base that would be almost impossible to maintain.
