Download NetBeans IDE 6.1 Final Release

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Final is released yesterday.

As mentioned in the release overview, The NetBeans IDE 6.1 release provides several new features and enhancements, such as rich JavaScript editing features, support for using the Spring web framework, tighter MySQL integration, and an improved way of sharing libraries among dependent projects. The acclaimed support for Ruby/JRuby has been enhanced with new editor quick fixes, a Ruby platform manager, fast debug support for JRuby, and many other new features and fixes.

By popular demand, the bean pattern and JSF CRUD generation features that were missing in the 6.0 release have returned. In addition, early versions of new modules, such as ClearCase support, are available as plugins.


Get your copy of NetBeans IDE 6.1 GA from the download page in your favorite pack.

with regards
Tushar

Download NetBeans IDE 6.1 RC2

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available. You can download your favorite pack from the download section of NetBeans site now.

The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.1 is scheduled on April 23rd, 2008. So three days from now we can download the final release.

(NetBeans Roadmap)

(UPDATE: The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.1 is now planned on 28th April 2008. Earlier it was planned for 23rd April but has been postponed to 28th April 2008 now. The change in plan can be seen in the roadmap page on netbeans.org site)

Top 10 NetBeans IDE Keyboard Shortcuts I use the most

Initially for exploration of the features working with mouse may feel fancy but as you continue using the tool for project development and want to concentrate more on task in hand you start finding ways to do things faster. NetBeans IDE 6.1 provides many keyboard shortcuts if used judiciously they can save a lot of developers time.

I use certain shortcut keys more often than other keys. This is a list of the keyboard shortcuts for NetBeans IDE which I use in my day to day development tasks.

1. CTRL+F12 Navigate to Member

When my class becomes big and there are many methods in the class navigating to a specific method becomes easy with this dialog box.

As soon as I start typing the name of the desired method the dialog contents are filtered for me to select from matching method names starting from what I have typed.


2. SHIFT+ESC Toggle Editor Maximize / Minimize

I like working in the fully maximized editor window. SHIFT+ESC maximize the editor window for me and I can work with full concentration. When I need to see other windows I can again press SHIFT+ESC and I get the normal layout of windows back.


3. CTRL+7 Activate Navigator Window

When I am in maximized editor mode and I need to navigate to some method, either I choose the method 1 as described above or sometimes I use CTRL+7 to activate the navigator window. The windows other than editor in NetBeans follow a specific pattern, you can type characters and a quick search window appears which selects the most appropriate item from the window according to what is typed in this quick search window.


4. CTRL+/ Toggle Comment

For quick commenting of some lines I select those lines and press CTRL+/ to comment all those selected lines. The same lines can be uncommented again by following the same process.


5. ALT+SHIFT+F Format Code

This key combination formats my code to the standard Java Code Formatting template.

6. CTRL+0 Activate the Editor

When I am in the Navigator window through the shortcut CTRL+7 and I want to navigate back to the editor i press CTRL+0. I do not need mouse to do this navigation and save a lot of time in navigating between windows.

7. CTRL+# Activate different windows

These shortcuts are handy for navigating between the different windows. They become very important when I work in maximized editor mode.
CTRL+1 - Project Window
CTRL+2 - Files Window
CTRL+3 - Favorite Window
CTRL+4 - Output Window
CTRL+5 - Services window
CTRL+6 - Tasks Window

8. ALT+INSERT Generate Code

When I need to generate getter setters or constructors this key combination brings the Code Generation menu


9. ALT+F7 Find Usages

Many a times I want to track all the occurrences of a particular method call. Who is calling my method. This Find Usages dialog comes handy in such times.


10. CTRL+F4 Close Editor Window and CTRL+SHIFT+F4 Close All Editor Windows

I use these keys often to close my editor windows and save many mouse clicks.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans Innovator Grant Projects Announced

As mentioned on the grants page on NetBeans site the NetBeans Innovators Grant is a process to provide grants to developers or teams of developers to work on an open source project. A total of 10 large projects will be chosen and awarded a grant of US$ 11,500 dollars. Another 10 smaller projects will be chosen and awarded a grant of US$ 2,000 dollars. Awards will only be awarded upon actual project completion. Projects that excel may receive one of two possible gold awards of US$ 11,000 dollars or two possible silver awards of US$ 5,000 dollars.

Tom Wheeler, on behalf of NetBeans Dream Team, announced the names of the Large as well as Small projects on the openide-dev mailing list today.

I can see 10 large and 10 small projects getting added to the NetBeans treasure in August as this competition takes final turn. Apart from the winning the most important thing is NetBeans community will get 20 best add on features in the NetBeans platform.

Congratulations to all the winners. The list will be published soon on the NetBeans web site for all.

with regards
Tushar

Ohloh flags NetBeans incorrectly, as a mostly JavaScript project

What is Ohloh?
Ohloh is a open source software directory. Ohloh recognizes the open source source control repositories and when a open source project is registered with Ohloh it crawls the source repository directly and generates reports about the activity and nature of the projects.


NetBeans information on Ohloh
When I checked about NetBeans project on Ohloh to add it to my stack of projects I was surprised to read Ohloh mentioning NetBeans as a mostly written in JavaScript project.

Click here to visit NetBeans page on Ohloh

The mostly written in information, as given by Ohloh site, is extracted from the analysis of NetBeans source repository. This means the source of NetBeans mostly contains JavaScript files.


What is the language used to develop NetBeans?
I know that NetBeans IDE is written in Java language. The NetBeans site do not mention this fact any where as it may be taken as a implicit fact. The NetBeans site mentions about the features of NetBeans and what it can do for you but what it is written in is kept implicit, or at least I could not find any page mentioning the programming language of NetBeans IDE. Now as I am subscribed to NetBeans developers mailing list I know from the discussions going on there that NetBeans is developed in Java.

I have added a comment to the Ohloh mostly written by page to highlight that NetBeans is a Java project and not JavaScript. You can also comment on it to add to it.

with regards
Tushar

10 Things NetBeans must do to survive

(NetBeans.org web site in initial days around 2001, obtained from WayBack Machine)

I stumbled upon an old post by Matt Stephens with the title 10 Things NetBeans must do to survive. Matt has reviewed NetBeans version 3.0 probably and the post is dated October 27, 2003. I got tempted to check whether his points hold good today for the current version after around 4 and half years of that review.

1. Improve the windowing system
In his first point he points out towards the windowing system. I have used IntelliJ IDEA and I daily use Eclipse in my day job. I can say the windowing system in NetBeans is according to current standards. Same dockable windows, floating windows and expandable editor windows. I am able to use the windowing system without much difference noticed.

2. Improve Usability
In his second point he mentions options panel, properties panel, GUI panel and Wizards being unfriendly. I have not used the NetBeans version 3.0 so cannot say about these windows in that version. For NetBeans IDE 6.1 I can see the options window, properties window, GUI panel and Wizards according to the current industry standards. If you do not have to learn a feature because it follows already established industry standard then that feature can be called as usable. In fact the GUI builder now have choices to create Java code which is not dependent on any NetBeans library.

3. Improve the default Look and Feel
In his third point Matt mentions default look and feel which in his view was not good at those times. Now I can see my NetBeans IDE opening with the Windows XP look and feel for me. This means the IDE now has smart look and feel features. I even tried changing my look and feel by changing the look and feel entry in netbeans.ini configuration and I now know I can have any look and feel to my NetBeans IDE.

4. Keep enhancing Java Editor
In his fourth point he suggests NetBeans to keep the Java editor up to date. I can see many good features now available for Java Editor. There are some hints missing but I see the Java Editor making progress in each version.

5. Slow down on APIs
Matt expresses unhappiness for the rapidly changing API of NetBeans platform. I can see many books in the market now with the established set of APIs. I feel the API of NetBeans is quite matured now and this point does not hold good now.

6. Make the APIs simpler
In this point it is mentioned that API is not suitable for standalone applications to get developed on the NetBeans platform. I cannot say much for this point. You the reader may have better points and if you do please tell me in comments of the post. What I can say is I have seen some applications developed on top of the NetBeans platform and hence do not feel the APIs are not good enough or simple.

7. Lose the NetBeans is slow stigma
The performance of NetBeans has been improved by the NetBeans team from version to version. The startup time is now fast and many benchmarking reviews are available.

8. Offer built-in refactoring support
Now NetBeans has a refactoring menu for Java refactoring. I can see major refactoring options available out of the box.

9. Make more noise
For this point Tim Boudreau also have stated in comments that hyped publicity do not last long. I can see many users of NetBeans writing about it and this is the most original and first hand publicity a software tool can get. So this point has being covered by different and better means creative of publicity and promotion.

10. Stop using that… brown colour scheme on their website
Here Matt says brown color should be left behind and NetBeans should embrace more professional color. I do not agree much to his point but now NetBeans.org site has different colors that those days. The colors now are blue shades and smooth colors to eyes.

Concluding my review of the review I will say that all the points mentioned by Matt are covered by the new NetBeans IDE 6.1 and not only that the IDE now contains many more improvements and support for multiple languages as well.

If Matt writes about the current version of NetBeans IDE 6.1 again I believe he will agree to all my points and will also add some more praise to the points more than me.

Do read that review also as it contains many comments from many important people with interesting viewpoints. Do comment on my post with your opinion.

Recently I saw some back links for my blog. Many thanks to Ramesh and Jay for the link backs.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Mercurial in NetBeans - Working with Remote Repository

(You will need Mercurial installed in windows to see the things in this article working. We covered installing Mercurial in windows in an earlier post here)

Support for remote repositories in NetBeans IDE 6.1 is limited to updating and pulling. I wish I could have done all the required things only in NetBeans IDE but unless full support is available in NetBeans IDE we will use NetBeans IDE and TortoiseHg windows shell client to achieve our goals.

Let us start with the free Mercurial project hosting site FreeHg. FreeHg provides free sign up and hosting of your mercurial repositories. If you do not have an account yet sign up now.

Let me create a new repository named myhgtest


After clicking the button Create repository for tusharvjoshi I can see the repository created and displayed on the web page with its web address as http://freehg.org/u/tusharvjoshi/myhgtest/


This is an empty but initialized Mercurial repository for me on remote server. To work with this repository I will clone it to my workstation.

Right clicking in empty space of My Computer window will bring windows context menu with TortoiseHg > Clone a repository option.


I will name my repository as myhgtest and will provide the remote web address for my source path

TortoiseHg creates a new folder and clones the remote repository in that folder.


NetBeans IDE cannot create a new NetBeans project in an existing directory yet. I will have to create a dummy project for this purpose. Let me create a project with name myhgtest-temp just for creating the project skeleton files.


Now as the project skeleton is ready as seen in the image


I will copy all the files in this folder myhgtest-temp to my cloned repository folder myhgtest. Now when I choose Open project command in NetBeans IDE it will show my cloned repository also. Open that project.

We can see Netbeans IDE identifies that this project is under Mercurial version control. Remember we have not yet committed the NetBeans project configuration skeleton files, so the files are shown in a different color.


Let us commit the files to the repository. Committing, Updating can be done from within the Netbeans IDE.

Now we have all the files committed to the local repository. Now when I am done with my development I want to share this version with my friends. The push command to remote repository is not supported in NetBeans IDE 6.1 yet and gives an error for me.

I choose to right click in the folder window and TortoiseHg > Synchronize... option


The synchronize window has an option of Push. Let us choose that option

As soon as I choose the Push option TortoiseHg asks for the password for the repository. Cloning can be done without password but pushing to a repository requires a password in FreeHg server.

It successfully pushed the files. How to check whether the files are really updated on the remote server?

When I refreshed the project page in my browser I could see the new change-set available on the changes section of the project.

This is how we can share a Mercurial project through a remote server. All the developers can clone the project and update the project through Push commands. NetBeans IDE provides identification and local commands to work with the local Mercurial repository copy.

I will like to have all the features in NetBeans IDE as I said earlier so that TortoiseHg is no more needed. I believe this will be very soon.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur