Components
Code Editor
The Code editor is the most used component of an IDE and NetBeans' Code Editor includes common features provided by any IDE such as syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding, bookmarking, hyperlinked navigation, shortcuts for editing and navigation, automatic code indentation, code formatting, optimizing import statements, etc.
While Syntax highlighting is available for Java, JSP, HTML, XML, CSS, and IDL, code completion support is only available for Java, JSP, HTML, and XML. The editor also parses code automatically and highlights possible errors or compiler warnings.
You can group and save your keyboard shortcuts as Profiles, which means you can essentially force NetBeans to respond to shortcuts you are used to in other IDEs. This can be a good productivity gain if you're migrating from other IDEs to NetBeans.
The NetBeans IDE also has some features not found in a lot of other IDEs—like abbreviations that generate code snippets (for instance, typing sout and hitting space will generate the code snippet System.out.println("")) and access to JavaDocs of referenced classes or methods.
NetBeans also adds a lot of code generation facilities like generation of getters and setters for JavaBean properties, complex code generation for Web service client stubs (through a wizard), generation of Struts ActionForms and Struts Action classes, and code generation of helper classes based on the Java Persistence API.
It also includes visual editors for XML, Schemas, Java Properties files, and Web application deployment descriptors.
The Enterprise Pack
NetBeans offers an Enterprise pack for developing service-oriented architecture applications (SOA) using XML and BPEL. The Enterprise pack offers a basic UML modeling tool that allows you to create eight types of UML diagrams, along with a visual editor that allows you to visualize XML schemas, BPEL objects, and Web services. It also shows relationships between objects and allows the developer to delve into the relationships and see their dependencies. The Schema editor offers wizards to edit and create new schemas from scratch. It also offers the ability to see the relationships and dependencies the elements have with each other. The BPEL module allows you to create and edit BPEL-based services and directly deploy them into Sun's application server. The BPEL runtime engine is integrated into the application server and the debugger for runtime debugging.
The NetBeans Profiler
The NetBeans profiler, provided as an add-on to the NetBeans IDE, is a full-fledged profiler that can help alleviate memory- and performance-related problems. The profiler provides facilities for CPU, memory, and thread profiling—as well as offering JVM monitoring.
Unlike other profiling tools, you don't need to setup the NetBeans profiler before an application starts executing. You can plug it in and out while the application is running. You can also plug it into part of the code, while the rest of the application runs normally.
Visual Web Pack
The Visual Web pack is an add-on provided with NetBeans for rapid Web development through a user interface. It provides facilities to customize queries and preview the results within the development environment. It also has a facility to define the flow of data using Java Server Faces. The standard libraries of Java Server Faces objects are available for use in the Visual pack environment. It also supports AJAX-based Java Server Faces Components.
Swing Development Tool
NetBeans' Swing development tool is one of the finest Swing GUI development tools in the market. The core of the Swing development tool, which was first introduced with NetBeans 5.0 (as Project Matisse), is the new layout manager called GroupLayout. This layout manager was developed especially to work with the Swing development tool. However, it was found suitable for hand coding as well and has now been included in JDK 6. Please refer to the JavaDocs for JDK 6 to learn more about GroupLayout. While knowing the underlying details of any component is always useful, you do not need this knowledge to use the Swing development tool. The interface is extremely intuitive and simple and allows any novice programmer to develop Swing UIs. This is possible because the tool provides visual guides to help align and space components.
Designing an interface is as simple as dragging the necessary components from the Palette, positioning and aligning them (again, by dragging—the tool does a lot of work here by snapping components to grids, displaying guidelines to show alignment with other components, etc.), and sizing them.
There is a code view for the forms you design, just in case you want to take a peek or modify some parts manually. While most of the code is editable, some parts of the code are locked for editing (as the GUI tool refreshes the code constantly due to changes). The component palette is extensible and allows user defined components to be stored and accessed through the palette.
The Mobility Pack
The NetBeans 5.5 IDE offers comprehensive support to develop applications for mobile devices using the Mobility pack module. The mobility pack allows users to develop, test, and debug mobile application code using the Java micro edition platform. It offers support for industry standards like Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP).
The C/C++ Pack
Only a handful of Java IDE's provide support for C++ development in addition to regular Java development. NetBeans scores better than the other IDEs by providing an integrated C++ development environment that allows for C++ development along side your Java code. This feature is very helpful when C/C++ code needs to be integrated with Java code through JNI.
The NetBeans Platform
The NetBeans platform is a free backbone provided by Sun to develop new products that need a user interface. Instead of designing a new UI from scratch, NetBeans provides a way to plug into your product using the NetBeans UI and customize it. This is similar to the Eclipse backbone provided by Eclipse.
The Portal Pack
NetBeans provides a Portal plugin called Portal pack that allows for seamless portal development within NetBeans. The Portletbuilder within the Portal pack allows for creation of portal applications based on the JSR 168 portlet specification. The server plugins, which are part of the Portal pack, enable direct deployment of portal applications into portal servers. There is a generic plugin provided for help to integrate with any portal server apart from the specific plugins for Sun Portal server and the open source portlet container.
A High Standard in Product Quality
Sun Microsystems is maintaining its high standards for product quality with this latest version of NetBeans. The IDE has a lot of features that are not present in other editors and will help make developers more productive. One of the highlights of NetBeans is its ease of integration with other products and tools. This is evident from the list of vendors creating plugins for NetBeans. If NetBeans can make improvements at this rate, it will soon have a user base that rivals Eclipse. Eclipse and NetBeans are all set to conquer the IDE market in the next few years. This competition is good for developers as we can expect better features from both the products as the competition heats up.
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