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NetBeans IDE 3.5 Beta

Posted by michael on from the jamaican-blue-mountain dept.

Rob writes "We are pleased to announce the availability of the beta version of NetBeans IDE 3.5 release (codenamed Tegal). This release is focused on performance improvements, especially in the area of UI responsiveness. The binary and source distributions in various formats have been uploaded onto the website. We encourage all Java developers to download, try, test the bits, report problems and provide feedback. Also check out the new netbeans.org website design."

33 comments

  1. BEANS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like flicking beans

  2. Who is daring enough by chaotica1974 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I tried NetBeans a year ago and the UI was so unresponsive that menus would literally takes 10 seconds to come up. That's when a friend introduced me to Eclipse and I saw that Java IDEs don't have to suck. I have never looked back. I noticed this version claims to increase UI Speed/Responsivness. Can anyone that is using it back that up? When you maximize the window, do you see painfull Swing repaints? How much memory does this thing chug up when initially started (Before loading projects etc..)

    1. Re:Who is daring enough by RevAaron · · Score: 1

      I've not tried this new version, so I can't say whether or not is feels faster than older releases. I've had a similar experience with NetBeans myself. I don't think it could get *much* faster, as it does still rely on Swing; and it relies on Swing to do some pretty complex stuff with a bucket-load of widgets used at the same time.

      So, I imagine it still chugs. Keep on using Eclipse, which doesn't use Swing, if something non-chugging suits your fancy. Or, buy a new super-mega-ultra-fast machine just so you can run Swing apps without wait 10 seconds for menus to pop up.

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
    2. Re:Who is daring enough by AssFace · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've never used NetBeans under Linux, only ever Win2K or WinXP. The machines I've used it on were my laptop which is an Athlon Mobile 1G with half a gig of RAM. My work machine (at the time), which was a dual PIII 667 with half a gig of RAM (and I think later a full gig). And then my current work machine which is a P4 2G with half a gig of RAM.

      I used it way back when it was... crap - it was a different name. That version was absolutely terrible. Then the first iteration of NetBeans was a little better, but I definitely thought it was slow.
      But for the past two years I've found it to be pretty nice - but then, I don't know if you consider the machines I'm on to be high end or something.

      I've never used Eclipse, perhaps it is a better editor - I mainly just want something that has autocomplete, syntax highlighting, and bookmarks - other than that, I'm not really a power user of the thing.
      A fellow I worked with used NetBeans in a way that I am used to seeing people use emacs - as a swiss army knife that was great for many things.

      I wish that it had functionality like Kommodo where you could fold up your functions to conserve space on screen... perhaps it *does* have that feature and I just haven't seen how to turn it on?

      I personally have never had any issues with NetBeans and I like it - but like I said, I'm not much of a power user.

      --

      There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
    3. Re:Who is daring enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      NetBeans will never be the IDE for low-end machines, but to claim it universally "sucks" in terms of UI responsiveness is unfair.

      On a mid-level enterprise development machine (1 GHz CPU and plenty of RAM -- how much depends on how much your other apps take), it works extremely well -- at least once you tune the Java heap and garbage collection parameters. [Sun has provided such parameters on the web, but unfortunately they're not set in the IDE out-of-the-box.]

      [Personally I'll use Swing any day over an overly thin wrapper like SWT.]

    4. Re:Who is daring enough by chaotica1974 · · Score: 1

      I was not hoping to start the same old argument 'Swing is god, SWT sucks' or 'SWT is god, Swing sucks'. So, give me a minute while I stoop way down to your level:


      [Personally I'll use Swing any day over an overly thin wrapper like SWT.]

      So what your saying there is that you would rather use the fat bloated API of Swing over the thin API of SWT and JFace? Understand this: Swing is build on top of AWT. AWT is a wrapper. SWT is a wrapper. What this all boils down to is the lame argument of 'SWT is evil because it is a native wrapper' is crap. in the end Swing is using a very similar wrapper. IBM (for once) just happened to write their wrapper correctly while Sun just pushed crap out on us and never looked back, they just added more crap ontop of more.

      Don't believe that Sun writes crap code? Check out the source for Swing. You'll be amazed. Then, check out their bug parade and look at all of the bugs that developers have been waiting to get fixed for years. Yes, years. If you do prefer emulated Swing over anything native, do you then prefer to run your OS inside of VMWare?

    5. Re:Who is daring enough by ProfKyne · · Score: 1

      I have used both NetBeans (the release immediately previous to this advertised beta) and Eclipse (2.1) on both Win2k and MacOS X on roughly comparable systems. I loved NetBeans at first, and used it a couple of small Java projects - on Windows, it is fast and responsive enough, and I am not one of those who doesn't like the look and feel of Swing's "metal" theme (because, as lifelong Mac user, all Windows apps look strange to me). However on MacOS X, the app is a dog. The ten-second wait you described is a typical lag time for the contextual menu to pop up ("right mouse button menu"). As far as I am concerned, it is unuseable. Perhaps things will change if it is ported to use the new Java 1.4.1 JRE for Mac, which uses Cocoa for windowing, but the version of NetBeans I was using uses the 1.3 JRE. Maybe that is one of the new features of this beta.

      About two weeks ago I was persuaded to try Eclipse by someone on the Tomcat mailing list. I had always stayed away from Eclipse because NetBeans did what I needed (on Windows) and I was familiar with it. But I took him up on the challenge and booted up the newest release of Eclipse and went through the tutorial. Wow! This is one slick application. Eclipse offers so many niceties and little features above NetBeans, or at least that I never noticed in NetBeans. I'm not referring to the SWT-based responsiveness either, just the actual UI design itself. The various perspectives, etc. Features I never expected to see. I'm hooked, and was excited by the fact that perhaps Eclipse on MacOS X wouldn't suffer from the slowness, since apparently SWT is all about using platform-native display code.

      Unfortunately, Eclipse is only marginally better on MacOS X than NetBeans. It is considerably slow, and there are missing features (perhaps only offered by the Windows version of SWT) such as dockable views, etc. Even an entire menu (the "source" menu) was missing. I'm not sure why. It pains me because Eclipse is possibly the best software I have ever used on Windows (remember I'm a Mac user, so I haven't actually used a lot of Windows software).

      I have heard that the best Java IDE on MacOS X is IntelliJ's IDEA, and someday I'd like to try it out. But at $500, I think I'll have to wait until I get a better job. Something to look out for, at least.

      --
      "First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
    6. Re:Who is daring enough by j3110 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not Eclipse fast yet, but I was really impressed. I'm glad there are a couple of good free IDE's to compete. If it weren't for eclipse, I think NetBeans would remain slow forever. NetBeans, as it stands, has about 2x the functionality of Eclipse, but Eclipse is closing in from that angle as well.

      They'll probably meet in the middle, and there will be a holy war about as bad as Vi vs Emacs (except we all learned that different people like different interfaces from that war, so it will never get quite that bad I would say.). Although there is that stupid SWT vs Swing holy war of FUD (SWT is not really faster, but .dispose isn't that big of a deal either.)

      So, I would urge everyone to give it a spin when they get some time, but use whichever works best for you (just like SWT vs AWT vs Swing vs Thinlets vs etc.).

      VB people may feel more at home with NetBeans (with the GUI designer).

      VC++ people will probably like Eclipse.

      jEdit + ANT people will keep doing their thing and probably not care about either.

      I like both Eclipse and NetBeans. Everytime one releases a new update, I usually like them better. It's like watching them play poker. "I call your performance and raise ANT support."

      Just so you guys know, don't try to run Eclipse on a slow machine either. Eclipse can take a LONG time to load. Both suck if you have less than 128M of RAM.

      --
      Karma Clown
    7. Re:Who is daring enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not saying SWT is bad because it's a wrapper -- or that Swing is good because it's well implemented.

      Rather SWT is bad because it is too thin of a wrapper to hide the platform differences adequately -- and also because it is non-standard and does not play well with standard GUI components without extra work/consideration.

      Swing has plenty of bugs -- I should know, I've filed some of them. On the other hand, it works and works the same everywhere.

      At the end of the day, I don't care about SWT. I'd be more inclined to use Eclipse the primary extension GUI API framework was a standard one, but I'd still be disinclined to use it as it struck me as even more foreign than NetBeans (which struck me as quite foreign when I first used it -- but not to the degree that Eclipse did).

      Ah, if only there was a free CodeWarrior look-a-like that had been extended to keep up with the times... [CodeWarrior always had a bare-metal, anti-kitchen-sink approach -- which is not the direction of most Java apart from J2ME.]

    8. Re:Who is daring enough by ChannelX · · Score: 1

      But apparently Swing is good enough to create quick-UI IDEs like JEdit and IntelliJ IDEA. Swing has its own issues but like anything else when you learn to work with it properly it can be fast. SWT has its own issues. It is far from a panacea. I'd still choose Swing over SWT exactly because of the way Swing is written. Its highly extensible and used properly it is fast.

      --
      My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
  3. Give us some help here by hey! · · Score: 1

    It'd help some of us who aren't part of the netbeans community if somebody would explain exactly what the relationship between the netbeans effort and Sun is. Is it like Mozilla and AOL?

    Is there a competitive matrix somewhere which includes netbeans?

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Give us some help here by MyGirlFriendsBroken · · Score: 2, Interesting

      AFAIK the code for Netbeans origonally come from Sum from their IDE. Netbeans is now under some Sun open source lisence and is developed by the netbeans community. It is, however, extended by a number of commercial outfits with more functionality, typically J2EE stuff etc. Sun is one of thouse outfits which extends the IDE to give us Forte.

      .Incidentally Forte community edition is almost exactly the same at netbeans but tends to run a few months behind. There is a road map somewhere with both netbeans and forte on it but I can't find it at the minite, it was somewhere on the netbeans site though.

      --
      If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
    2. Re:Give us some help here by timotten · · Score: 3, Informative

      ...what the relationship between the netbeans effort and Sun is. Is it like Mozilla and AOL?

      Off the top of my head... yes and no.

      Mozilla and NetBeans both started out as college research projects; both grew into businesses; both were assimilated by larger businesses; and both were eventually released as open source. NetBeans is availabile under a variant of the Mozilla license.

      That said, I think NetBeans is more important to Sun than Mozilla is to AOL. As far as I know, AOL doesn't get any commercial fruits from Mozilla directly, and itisn't being used in any significant commercial projects. Sun, however, does market some heavish software on top of NetBeans (Sun ONE Studio), and so do several other companies.

    3. Re:Give us some help here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Overall the Netscape/Mozilla analogy is a pretty good one here.

      The difference is that beyond the Community Edition of Sun ONE Studio, Sun has several commercial versions with real value-add components built on the same framework. Thus the Netscape/Mozilla analogy holds mainly for the free Sun ONE vs. NetBeans, whereas Sun also has commercial versions.

    4. Re:Give us some help here by tupps · · Score: 1

      AOL software for the Macintosh uses Mozilla code. I assume that the Windows AOL software will follow after the mac users have beta tested it.

      --
      Go out and get sailing!
  4. freshmeat anyone? by charstar · · Score: 1

    doesn't this kinda thing belong of freshmeat?

  5. Maybe this one will install? by Wonko42 · · Score: 1

    Do the "performance improvements" include not hanging after clicking "Next" in the Windows installer? It would be a lot easier to use the IDE if the installer worked.

  6. New Java VMs make a big difference, too by LoveMe2Times · · Score: 1

    While I haven't tried the new NetBeans, I have been using the latest stable for a couple of months now for some servlet development with Tomcat. There was a HUGE improvement when I upgraded to the 1.4 Java SDK. All the repaint problems disappeared, which was the most annoying thing in the first place. I'll be excited to try out this new version, though.

  7. why IDEs? by inkedmn · · Score: 1

    I've never understood the use of IDEs, it just seems like an overly bloated piece of software that creates basic application structure (that most could scrawl out on a decent sized cocktail napkin) and assist in GUI building (assist used loosely). These minimal benefits don't outshine the speed and extensibility of vim, a whiteboard and an API.

    --
    well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
    1. Re:why IDEs? by __past__ · · Score: 1

      IDE are important, especially for the Java community. Didn't you notice that there are hardly any Swing applications real people actually use other than IDEs with Swing GUI builders?

      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
    2. Re:why IDEs? by stj · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Well, there are some geniuses that can visualize complex, 2000 files, 1mln lines of code software design and remember all components. There are some who can possibly write this whole thing in edlin and not miss a character, compile and voila - there you have a perfect operating system, word processing application, VLSI design package. The only problem with them is that they are stubbornly hiding in some caves. I have never seen any.

      I appreciate IDEs for:

      functions' and variables' definitions at the mouse pointer,

      API descriptions - ditto,

      built-in extensive debugging support with good data visualization,

      possiblity to automate obvious actions - like CVS updates, compilations - likelihood of typing rm -rf src at 4am decreases dramatically

      in many cases - really, really good support for collaborative program development,

      possible dozen other things I don't remember right now but that come in handy now and then.

      I've written large programs in vi, I've used IDEs starting from Turbo C 2.0 (even fixed a bug in that one). There is absolutely no advantage of vi over any IDE except for relatively small size, there are numerous advantages of good IDEs over vi. NetBeans is surprisingly good as a total freeware. While Eclipse looks simpler and will be definitely more responsive looking just at the GUI screenshots, I do appreciate some differences from Eclipse.

      yeah, bog me down for trolling ;)

      --
      iThink iHate iMod
  8. An equally valid argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I've never understood the use of computers, they just seem like overly bloated pieces of hardware that allow you to do calculations, create documents, and drawings. These minimal benefits don't outshine the speed an extensibility of pencil and paper.

  9. And where is it? by stj · · Score: 1

    I've been using NetBeans 3.4. As yet it forced me to upgrade from 256MB RAM to 640 - with 256 it was simply impossible to use. I'd gladly welcome a good update, so I open my NetBeans, it asks about autoupdate and there it is not...
    Are they gonna actually post it on autoupdate? I don't really feel like downloading the stuff from the web and reinstalling everything manually...

    Now, I can't really say a bad word about NetBeans responsiveness - it just requires unbelievable amounts of memory - with 640MB and 1.1GHz CPU it works just as it should. I hope they will fix RMI debugging support sometime though.

    --
    iThink iHate iMod
  10. Netbeans performance by KingRamsis · · Score: 1

    Me and a fellow developer worked on a Java client application using netbeans, I would say netbeans is fair in performance, compared to IBM's VisualAge which sucks real bad to the point of discouraging development, but generally all Swing IDEs are slow and unrepsonsive, because Swing is based on AWT, so it is layers and layers of bloat, So far I think the only think Java is good for is server side not desktop applications, imagine developing something like Adobe photoshop using Swing, and netbeans required a hefty 512Mb (my first PC had 640Kb which is suppose to be enough for anyone), I gave up on Java for the desktop long ago until I recently installed the latest version of freenet now those people have totally different concept, launch a local server and use it from the browser and let the browser do all the dirty UI rendering stuff, maybe this is far more limited than the usual felxiable approach of a standalone desktop application but i was impressed by the concept itself.

    1. Re:Netbeans performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the freenet link above is wrong. It's
      http://freenetproject.org/
      Before I installed, I needed a credibility check. I found it on the O'Reilly Network:
      http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/05 /05/uprize r.html
      http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/11/1 4/ian.ht ml

  11. IntelliJ's IDEA is where it's at by los+furtive · · Score: 1

    Runs so smooth, live templates kick, it has seriously been the greatest improvement to overall productivity since I don't know when. I cannot recommend IDEA enough, of course I don't do any visual stuff, so maybe it's weak in that area.

    --

    I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.

  12. Correct link: http://freenetproject.org/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the freenet link above is wrong. It's
    http://freenetproject.org/

    Before I installed, I needed a credibility check. I found it on one of the O'Reilly Network sites:
    ian.html
    maybe uprizer is what the author above meant.

  13. Python IDE by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    While this is totally OT I realize, anyone ever run across an IDE that is as functional for Python, as NetBeans is for Java?

    Back OT: Its good to see NetBeans is still advancing, I got really concerned when Sun absorbed it..

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:Python IDE by GlowStars · · Score: 1
      Google is your friend (you really should try it one day):
  14. Thanks ... but... by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    I did do a google long before I asked this question.. and the first few I was not impressed with.. ( thus the original disclaimer of a IDE as functional as 'Beans.. ) I've been watching for one to appear for some time now..

    However the ones I've not heard of before ill check out.. ( active-state integrates with studio, so I cant use it here in a BSD shop )

    But thanks though...

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----