Don't Panic- The Definitive Guide to NetBeans™ Platform

Finally it is out. The Definitive Guide to NetBeans™ Platform is the result of a translation effort of the NetBeans Platform community. Led by Geertjan a team of about 10 interested community members translated the original book NetBeans Platform 6. It was a real interesting experience to be a member of such a team and we owe Geertjan big for pushing us so we completed this in about 4 weeks. If you ever get a chance to participate - do it - I can guarantee you will love it.

Give me more details - you think?

Well, here you go. I took the chapters about Lookup and Real-World Application Development and although I am developing NetBeans™ Platform Applications for 8 years I still experienced some aaahh and oohhs. During translating the chapters I had to think about the correct meaning and wording and this triggered some additional thinking about the ways I used this technologies. I discovered that there is a big difference in just reading the original book and struggling with every word. The second takes your understanding to another level.

Besides all this - it was just great to be part of such an effort (it just feels so good).

Hope to see you for the next translation effort.



What are you waiting for? Come back for an in depth review....

NetBeans 7 goes 6.7

So with all the changes inside Sun there is also a new roadmap available for NetBeans. Here are the details - direct from the horses mouth:

To get innovation and quality improvements out to the community faster, and to have the NetBeans IDE be better aligned with the release schedules of other technologies that it supports, we have decided to concentrate on a series of smaller releases rather than the traditional two big releases per year.

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NetBeans 6.7 is scheduled for release in June 2009. The main features are Maven and Kenai integration, and there are many smaller features that you can read about on the New and Noteworthy page.

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Java EE 6 support is planned for a future release. NetBeans 6.7 Milestone 2 is due out next week. We encourage you to download the release when it becomes available and to give us your feedback.

So - what are YOU waiting for? Download your dailies right now!

Devoxx 2009 is coming - early!

So Stephan did it - he moved the conference to November (16-20). So this will give us more time to prepare for christmas - the downside is we are going to miss the christmas market!

You don't believe it? Well go to Devoxx and see for yourself!

Winner 2009: NetBeans

This is the short form - just for the protocol here is the full announcement. Developer.com announced the winners in the Product of the Year 2009 competition -and guess what? NetBeans wins 5 out of 12 categories. YEEAAAAH!

What are YOU waiting for?

Start here at NetBeans.org or go directly to the downloads.

Enjoy!

P.S. To get more awards next year it seems we have to add .NET support to NetBeans ;-)

NetBeans 7.0 dev running on Windows 7 beta in VirtualBox

I just had to try this out. The installation went smooth and Windows 7 started. After figuring out some small problems trying to install the guest additions (seems there some versioning issues here with the installer not detecting the Windows version). So here is how it looks in full screen mode - you have to imagine the Aero things since those are not available inside VirtualBox.


Wow - that looks nice - testing a new OS in VirtualBox... So what is the result? I am not sure, but everything worked out of the box, but this should not be a big surprise, since it is "Vista" inside Windows 7...

BTW, I got USB, seamless mode and networking working as well with VirtualBox.

SQE - New Year's Eve and 2009

Again - after a long quiet period here some news from SQE - the last one for 2008.

Still, the actual main goal of SQE is to provide a stable release for NetBeans 6.5 .

Here is a list what we have already achieved and what will be part of the next binary drop. It will take a few more days before we can upload it - to allow us to ensure everything is working as expected after the major rewrite we did during Devoxx 2008.

Bug fixes:

• Fixes for numerous NPE, CCE
• use NetBeans 6.5 features where possible (Option Panel...)
  

New features

• codedefect history is now working
  
• further UI enhancements
  • windowgroup for codedefect results
  • move codedefect history to control center
• select checkstyle.xml to use
• even better sorting capability for PMD and Checkstyle results
  

Updates

• Update FindBugs to 1.3.6
• Update PMD to 4.2.4

Upcoming (new things or things already planned)

• Support for configuration of FindBugs and PMD based on Maven pom's
  
• Refresh on save/compile (especially useful for tasklist)
• NetBeans 7.0?
• PMD 5.0
  

Any other ideas, comments, wishes? Just leave your comment here or send an e-mail to the user list at sqe.dev.java.net.

... and don't forget we will be going full OpenSource at http://sqe.kenai.com in 2009 (promised) using Maven as build tool. This possibly allows us to provide different binary drops (e.g. PMD 4.x / PMD 5.x series) and many other exciting things.

Happy New Year 2009 to all of you - and see you in 2009!

New Book about NetBeans and Java EE 5

You know Java and you are looking for a simple introduction how to start with Java EE - try Java EE 5 - Development with NetBeans 6 from David R. Heffelfinger.

What I find most intriguing about the book is the coupling between something known to be complex and heavyweight (not really anymore if you believe Adam Bien) and something quite simple to use. The book shows the ease of doing Java EE development with NetBeans IDE - and I have to admit (as a long time NetBeans user) it really is easy to use. To give a short overview I would just say that all the buzzwords are covered (JSF, JSTL, JPA, WS, ...). But do not expect a reference book for Java EE 5 - it really is a hands-on one getting you to do something so you will be comfortable with the more complex Java EE things.

You want to know more details - listen to the NetBeans Podcast which has an interview with David up on its current episode.

Give it a try!