For the last two months, I've had the pleasure to write the first Vaadin on-line course on BlackBeltFactory.com. I've taught it to a classroom of 11 students while writing it.
An early question that indirectly came up from Joonas prior to writing this course is: "why on earth do you want to use your energy in writing a course text, while we have the book of Vaadin already?"
The answer is not straightforward. It think that the book of Vaadin had the same intent than a course, at the beginning. But with time, more and more content has been added to the book, which may be closer to a reference manual now.
Your quest when learning a new technology is probably to identify what piece of information is useful for you at each learning stage. To my opinion, reading the book of Vaadin sequentially is not the best option. Don't take me wrong, the book of Vaadin should not be thinner or restructured, it's great. Intermediate users need that nice reference. Teaching the course to real students while writing a course helps a lot: in the classroom you exactly feel what information is appropriate in what sequence.
Another difference with the book of Vaadin and the course are the exercises. The course also contains videos and will be translated in many languages. The first videos included are recorded during the first run of the course in classroom.
With all these differences in mind, its easier to understand why we need the same information duplicated on different formats: tutorial, book, speech at a conference, forum posts, ... course.
The on-line course is free for a few weeks: you don't need to hire a coach to read it.
Start learning today at: http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ui#!Course/vaadin-fundamentals
Feel free to suggest any improvement through the course comment system ("comment+" link below each section). You may also want to contribute to the corresponding exam by adding/imrpoving questions or voting on them.
Have fun.
John.