Read about it here : http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1396

Download it here : http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.7/rc/

I was curious what the buzz around NetBeans this year since I’m currently at JavaOne so I thought I’d lookup and mention some of the most searched for (or interesting) terms that people have searched for and hit my site with between January 01, 2009 and today, June 4, 2009.

Editor Plans for NB 6.8 : http://wiki.netbeans.org/EditorPlan68

Some of the more interesting (and frustrating issues) that might be addressed include :
- Fix error badges and error underlining
- Support for Class-Path attribute in manifest (finally!)
- Optimize Imports
- Make the IDE usable during scanning (Scanning and Data Usage) - this issue has been hotly debated in a variety of bug reports from some frustrated users.
- Format code and fix imports on multiple files (code beautifier)

Database Plans for 6.8 : http://wiki.netbeans.org/DatabasePlan68

Some of the possible improvements for the database features include:
- Improved SQL code completion
- Embedded SQL code completion (probably a big maybe)

General performance plans : http://wiki.netbeans.org/NB68PerfPlan

They also touched on the earlier announcement that Kenai will talk to the Hudson continuous integration server. Kenai will provide an actual Hudson server (you won’t need your own server). The feature will not be active by default. You will need to email the Kenai admins to request access to the private beta of Hudson support in Kenai. Sign me up!!!

They also announced a really cool Kenai feature to be released in the near future… voice over IP. Each project will have its own conference room where you can utilize an VOIP conference. It will be interesting to see how this works.

The session focused on a using Hudson overview, using HUdson in a distributed master/salve manner, and some of the newer use cases (such as with clouds and Kenai).

One of the cool items discussed was the Hudson Amazon EC2 plugin which allows you to automatically provision slaves on EC2 on demand. I haven’t heard it mentioned (yet), but I would imagine in the near future you will be able to do the same in Sun Cloud.

I didn’t hear much about Hudson and NetBeans or Hudson and Kenai. Maybe more later at their BOF.

The concept is to minimize the amount of time the user spends switching between the IDE and external web browser. Hopefully, it will work more like a WYSIWYG preview feature (think Dreamweaver style) and not a thick or heavy web browser. I know I’ve hoped for years to have a web preview option directly in NB. Hopefully this addresses some of that need.

You can follow the plans at the NetBeans Wiki at this location http://wiki.netbeans.org/EmbeddedBrowserPlan68.

Update : It took a little longer than “by the end of the general session”, but eventually Sun sent out custom links for each attendee to use DarkChat. See images below.

(sorry I blurred some names here so this looks a little dodgy)

The chat app is exclusive to attendees at JavaOne, but demos JavaFX nicely. I believe they also stated during the general session that this is backed by the DarkStar web/gaming engine.

James Gosling was onstage to announce it with a nifty T-shirt “Turning Labors of Love into Day Jobs”.

The store features several initial applications, where you can drag and drop applications out of the store to install them. A new store front with advanced features is planned to roll out soon as well.

The general concept is that developers with good ideas should be able to deploy applications to a world-wide audience without having to form companies, buy hardware, and incur large costs.

Developers can find out more at Verizon’s developer web site. Mor einfo TBD.

I’ll be interested to see if there’s any tie-in to development IDEs like NetBeans and if the Verizon APIs will be workable in the Mobility tools in NetBeans.

Upon entering the venue, I saw carnival booths where guests could try a ring toss or bean bag throw to win prizes.

There was also the usual Segway riding available… which proved to be quite popular since the line held quite long most of the evening.

There was also a blow-up ring for dodge ball. The teams faced off to win T-shirts (always a draw).

For about 15 or 20 minutes, a marching band named Extra Action paraded around the hall. They were a mixture of a marching band, jazz band, and I guess you would say an ‘interpretive dancing color guard’. Saying they were a bit weird would be an understatement (didn’t think Sun could get weirder than Grinder Girl and Mini-Kiss two years ago) as the group was comprised of a number of scantily dressed male and female dancers sporting costumes, flags, and a variety of audience interactions. I say weird, but only because they are quite unique. The musicians were actually quite talented and they definitely got the party started.

Finally, about mid-way through, a classic rock band named the Spazmatics rocked the house. This unique band, literally dressed as “uber-nerds” was highly entertaining. Their style and persona led to some interesting on stage antics. I’ll admit I didn’t expect much, but after hearing 2 or 3 covers, I very much liked there musical abilities. They were great performers, great musicians (the drummer had some awesome double-kick bass going on during one song), and they put on a pretty solid set of some well known classic rock songs.

So far, JavaOne week has been lots of fun.

John Brock

They covered a nice introduction to Kenai, its community focus, how to sign up for it, and what you can do with it.

Sharat Chander

Kenai is Sun’s version of SourceForge, though it has some nice benefits. One of the benefits is a tight integration with a development IDE, NetBeans. NetBeans has Kenai-related several features which allow you to interact directly with Kenai, it’s source code repositories, forums, bug trackers, etc. This session was more of an overview, though I’m looking forward to one or two sessions later this week at JavaOne that cover Kenai.

John and Sharat (running ahead of schedule shockingly) then did a Q&A taking questions from the audience. They discussed some of their design decisions creating Kenai, why they chose JRuby as their core implementation language, and their experiences with it.

About half-way through, Sharat hinted at a “big” Kenai-related announcement we’ll hear tomorrow (Tuesday). Assuming it is a feature or interesting tool. I’ll have to follow up and blog about it later. However, during the Q&A there was a “shhhhh” hint about continuous integration support inside Kenai (I’m assuming and hoping for Hudson support).

The morning general session started out with David Douglas, Sun’s VP for Cloud Computing and Developer Platforms giving some welcoming remarks, welcoming some student campus ambassadors,and doing some neat Sun Cloud Demos.

Sun Campus Ambassadors with David Douglas

Several of the guests and demos performed onstage related to Sun’s Cloud capabilities. The drag and drop demo for deploying a live datacenter was pretty cool, though I’d seen it on YouTube before. Some of the partners discussed using the Cloud for things like backing up your files (disaster recovery) and creating test environments for load testing applications.

So far CommunityOne has been interesting, but I’ll admit I miss the days when the Monday before JavaOne was mostly reserved for “NetBeans Day”. Ahh, the good old days.

Review the release notes here : http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/67/

Download NetBeans IDE 6.7 Beta here : http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.7/beta/

Details on the new and noteworthy are here : http://wiki.netbeans.org/NewAndNoteworthyMilestone3NB67

For example, the first time you try to create a Mobile Java app, the mobile-related plugins are activated.

During the initial install, the first screen gives you the standard options to configure what gets installed. In the screenshot below, I am installing the ‘Java’ download bundle. You will see that Ergonomics is an option to install.

NetBeans 6.7 Milestone 2 Installer Screen

 Once you have finished the installation, start NetBeans. For me the initial start was quite quick, though I did just get a new dual-core laptop (finally).

I went to the main menu and selected Tools > Plugins. The Plugin window opened and I noticed a number of plugins were installed, but deactivated by default, as shown in the image below.

List of deactivated plugins in the plugin manager

Most of the web-related plugins are deactivated. If the Ergonomics feature was not installed, I would think this would be a bug since I specifically installed the ‘Java’ bundle which typically has a number of web-related plugins activated by default. However, with the Ergonomics feature installed, this is intended.

To test this, I exited the Plugins window and went to  the main menu to create a new project. I selected File > New Project and selected Java Web > Web Application. When I clicked the next button, I saw a warning that support for Java EE needed to be activated, as shown below.

When I clicked the Activate button I saw a small progress meter in the center of the New Project window letting me know the feature was currently being activated. After less than a second or two, the feature was activated and I was able to view the standard new project wizard screen for naming the project.

As expected, a trip back to the Plugin window shows that a number of Java EE-related plugins were activated to enable me to create the Java Web project.

In general this seems like a good feature and it works as expected. It seems especially nice for people who want to download the entire full blown IDE version, but not have every single plugin activated by default.  It would be nice if long term, it tracked the type of projects you opened, created, etc. and if you didn’t work with Java EE projects for a few weeks would automatically deactivated Java EE-related plugins.

I’ll continue playing around with it and post any updates I discover.

Woo-hoo!

Kudos Travis.

Read about the second coming of NetBeans.

…Or you can copy and paste this URL in the link above does not work :

http://traviswalt3rs.blogspot.com/2009/02/second-coming-of-netbeans.html