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NetBeans 5.0 Released
pgsqlDAO writes "NetBeans 5.0 has been released. The new version of the cross platform, extensible, award winning Integrated Development Environment (IDE) comes out with some impressive features that make developing GUI and Web applications easier as well as new modules for creating extensions to NetBeans. The new Matisse GUI Builder makes it easier to layout professional looking windows and dialog boxes. On the web front you can register JBoss and Weblogic servers to deploy and test your applications intuitively from within the IDE. Better integration with popular web frameworks such as JavaServer Faces and Struts has been added including templates for the creation of JSF Managed Beans, Struts Actions, and Struts Form Beans. Other features included better tools for Web Services, Version Control, Debugging, Code Completion, Refactoring and more. Sun has also set up a free beta program to provide technical support to developers."
The 5.0 release is a huge improvement over the 4.x series. Apart from the new gui builder (which rocks!) there is a new profiler and they finally gave the IDE a decent options dialog (which resembles the one in firefox somewhat)
There's also the much needed integration with struts and BEA. And the editor has many improvemente (many of them borrowed from Idea)
NetBeans 5.0 > NetBeans 4.x > Eclipse
I've used NB for years (7 or so) and I'm very happy with the new version, at least what I've seen in beta. Of course, I don't touch many of the features as I have no need but for day to day Java development it's great. That's the nice thing about Java (and other languages to be sure)...it doesn't matter what you use to write the code, just as long as the code gets written (speaking as the lone NB on Windows user in an Eclipse on Linux shop).
I am a beginer when it comes to J2EE technology. I have been in Eclipse land, even paid $ for MyEclipse, but I have always come back to Netbeans (4.1) - It just works right out of the box - no need to go hunting for plugins, figuring out how they work... In addition to that the IDE seems to follow (from a beginners perspective) the Sun Specs to the dot, so the code/xml produced should be extremely portable. Another thing I really liked about Netbeans is that it defaults to the Sun Standardized stuff (atleast when it comes to EJB's) - Instead of making you massage XDoclet to get the beans you want (MyEclipse), it has a very nice GUI for both the web.xml and ejb-jar.xml files. Forgot to mention the nice GUI for creating the beans themselves :D.
My complements to the Netbeans team, I really like their product.
Just my thoughts, take it with a lot of salt, I am just a beginer.
The Matisse layout manager allows direct placement, but it offers guidelines and snap-to-grid hints, and it auto-places anchors for resizing. On the other hand, there is this JAR file one has to distribute with one's apps to get this new layout capability.
Could this finally be Java Swing as the VB killer? What I mean by this is that Swing is criticized for clumsy repaint, for ugly look-and-feel, for slow, etc. But is it good enough? VB apps are not known for speed or well-thought GUI design. For a lot of apps (whipping off a bunch of forms as a front-end to something) these are not considerations. What is a consideration is that someone versed in VB is not going to put up with Swing layout managers. If VB was the killer development app that kept people on Windows, this thing may help people break free.
The gui tools are next to none with Netbeans... well for free ide's that is. Jbuilder is nice too... does anyone still use it?
I need Java5 due to school so I have not been using Netbeans as the earlier versions had some issues with it. but I plan to switch and will fire it up later tonight after its done downloading.
http://saveie6.com/
Yeah, beans make me bloated too. :)
But I seriously like the looks of the Matisse GUI builder (as far as what I saw on the link to the demo). I used Netbeans a few years ago, and it was kinda' sluggish back then (don't know about now). I haven't done anything in java since then, but I am considering trying this out just for fun.
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I tried out NetBeans a few months back, before settling on Eclipse... my unscientific opinion is that NetBeans feels more sluggish when editing, but had some interesting features (that I didn't need, so Eclipse it is).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
How about other non-free IDE's like intellij IDEA ? :-).. and i think i am lovin it(vi) more than an IDE. There is nothing like vi(or mebbe emacs) for keyboard addicts, with the combination of ctags and minibufexplorer. Except debuggin, but thats okay since this is a different language.
I used it at work about a year back and it was awesome. Much better than eclipse in performance but kinda lacking in plugin diversity.
I have since shifted to writing c++ in vi and eclipse with CDT
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
I've been using Netbeans pretty routinely for a few years now. It's a little sluggish on the old development box I used (dual 733). I've found it to be quick and responsive on anything upwards of a 2.8Ghz P4 (haven't tried anything in between though). It benefits from having a good amount of free memory because gc'ing from the hard disk is expensive.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I saw some screenshots of it, and it looks like the editor finally got the subpixel rendering in there. It's still no cleartype, but at least the editor is now somewhat readable on a LCD.
I also haev used eclpise, but often wander back to NetBeans...
One great feature is that it takes so little time in NetBeans to simply mount a source tree, then attach a the debugger to a remote VM and be debugging code in 1/2 hour. Made it great for helping debug other peoples code, sometimes who did not know how to use a debugger at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perfect timing for NetBeans 5 to come out. I just got done starting up NetBeans 4.0. I started it when it came out.
A particularly nice type of coffee - on taht note - here's some nice java tutorials
Although, I do prefer netbeans GUI builder over the intellij one.
Does it do subversion out of the box?
I've been a long time and happy user of Borland JBuilder, but have recently decided to switch to a free environment. I picked Eclipse because I need to use JBoss at work and and JBoss seems to recommend it. So, after a great deal of readaption to a different way of thinking have finally become comfortable with Eclipse.
I've found Eclipse does some things nicer than JBuilder, but it also does some things worse. And it lacks some important features out of the box - like a gui builder.
Anybody got enough experience with NetBeans to say whether it is better or worse that Eclipse? And is Netbeans open source?
I have always been in two minds about NetBeans - it's good, but if a tool doesn't actually help in the code writing, then I might as well use a colorized text editor. So far, I've not been as impressed by NetBeans' ability to actually help as I'd have hoped.
Having said that, IMHO, if you want to do pure Java development, NetBeans has always been one of the top choices.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
When I see "...award winning..." in a text, I stop reading the rest.
I work freelance and every single one of my clients uses a different IDE and source tree setup. The only IDE that can consistantly deal with this situation is NetBeans 3.6.
The developers dropped the ball with 4.x and above. Everything has to be where NetBeans expects it without a lot of messing around. I mean 4.x won't even let me create a JSP file unless NetBeans thinks that it has a "web app" to create it in. WTF is up with that? Especially since I can create it in Konqueror and refresh the folder in NetBeans and it now recognises the JSP.
Nope, I'm staying on 3.6 and when my clients move to Java 5 I'll be looking around for something else...
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
got it yesterday
i love the new GUI Builder
also the plugin architecture
one thing tho i doesnt have the same error detection as eclipse
i love the way eclipse suggests solutions to problems and bugs
Ah... OK, I gave it a shot... Added the source trees to the project, removed one source branch and tried to add it again. Nope, can't do. Restart app, try again. Nope. Won't let me add the branch back. I'm done with this piece of crap. Back to Ecplise, it at least works.
I've been using 3.6 and I can't get it to word wrap long lines in xml files. It is kind of an annoyance. But I figured it would be fixed in the next version, no big deal.
But a colleague is using 4.1 and he couldn't get that to word wrap long lines either? It looks like you can word wrap the output area, but not the code editing workspace.
I'm only using the Windows version, does the linux version have word wrap? Is it buried in an option set somewhere that I haven't caught? If it is not possible and they haven't fixed it in 5.0, I will really wonder what they are thinking. Even simple text editors allow word wrapping.
Am I missing something?
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
Ohhhh ok. I thought it might have been that dismally failed bloated piece of shit Sun was pimping in the mid 90's.
I used to use the application about 5 years ago, since it was the best free IDE around for Java. The problem was that it was really heavy on the CPU and memory. Previously to that I used VisualCafe, and NetBeans was certainly an improvement.
Move on a bit and I discover Eclipse (maybe through a friend or collegue) and really got to like it. A few things that I liked were the performance and the ability to open multiple projects at the same time. I am hooked on Eclipse, but I am always willing to take a look at the alternatives, since sometimes they come up with an innovative approach for doing something. One thing that I miss in Eclipse is having no GUI builder.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
http://www.eclipse.org/vep/WebContent/main.php
I hear ya - Netbeans definitely likes the RAM. I have a winxp p4 2.8ghz box, and 512mb of ram was just not cutting it. Now I have 1.5 gig and it runs very smooth. I tend to be less critical of ram usage for dev tools, and ram is relatively cheap so I've pretty much stuck w/ Netbeans over Eclipse.
It apppears netbeans 5.0 footprint hasn't changed. I just built/ran a decent sized web app (150 classes, 200 jsp's), and it's currently soaking up 160mb for the ide and 60mb for built-in tomcat. Build time and overall responsiveness seem generally improved but it's too soon to make a final call.
My biggest gripe w/ Netbeans still hasn't changed, however: the api/documentation browsing still sucks (imho). Eclipse wins in this arena hands down - the "iTunes-like" multi-pane api browser is very quick and intuitive. With netbeans i feel like I'm scrolling or expanding tree-lists 90% of the time.
If you're in a corporate or school environment, check whether you have virus-protection that does on-access file scanning (most do). This will KILL your Netbeans performance (and I suspect any other java ide) as it's constantly loading/accessing .jar files. Once I added put .jar files in Norton's exception list things went much, much faster.