Netbeans 4.1 Released 240
njcoder writes "Netbeans 4.1 was released a few days ago. Though it is only a short time since 4.0 was released and only a minor version number increase, the new Netbeans 4.1 contains a number of significant enhancements. New features include enhanced support for J2ME (mobile) projects, a new Navigator component, enhancements to the Ant based project system, ability to define multiple source roots, enhanced support for J2EE applications including EJB support for creating Session, Entity and Message Driven Beans, bundled J2EE application server, bundled Tomcat server upgraded to the 5.5 series, Web Services support, Eclipse project import tool, and more. The days of a slow and ugly Netbeans seem to be over. Using the new Metal look and feel in Java 5 brightens things up a bit as well. More information can be found in the release info and go here to download the new version. Java boutique has a review, with screenshots, of the new released titled IDE Wars: Has NetBeans 4.1 Eclipsed Eclipse?."
Netbroken (Score:2, Interesting)
SWT is faster than AWT (Score:3, Interesting)
Am I the only one on here who likes Netbeans? (Score:5, Interesting)
The UI is responsive and the controls are intuitive. Building web apps isn't too difficult either. So where is the love?
This time, I supprised myself. (Score:2, Interesting)
For those in the know, how does NetBeans compare to ther Java IDEs especially on Linux?
how's the netbeans compiler? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Netbroken. . . but it had webapp debugging! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently the latest Eclipse milestone is much improved in this regard (so I'm told, I don't use it myself).
My problem with Netbeans is that the built-in editor is severely lacking in functionality when compared to both Eclispe and IntelliJ IDEA. I really want to like Netbeans, because I found it much easier to jump in and get started with it than Eclipse and it's much cheaper (i.e. free) than IDEA. But I gave up on it because it doesn't have things like IDEA's intentions (I believe there is something similar in Eclipse), automatic generation of getters, setters and constructors from fields, that thing where you press control and click on a class name in the source to go to that file, and several other niceties. Its refactoring support is also lacking when compared to that of its rivals.
To be fair most, if not all, of the issues I've mentioned are planned for future releases according to their website, but it's not there yet .
Re:No mention of IntelliJ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I too am a fan of IntelliJ, but it's not always easy to convince the boss to stump up for a licence when the other Java guys are happy with Eclipse.
IntelliJ is kind of like Opera to Eclipse's FireFox. It's the commercial innovator with the smaller market share competing against a free alternative that is backed by big players in the IT arena. There's an interesting parallel in the way these applications have been developed. In both cases the open source projects have gone for a flexible platform enhanced by a huge array of plugins whereas the commercial players have opted for a more integrated approach with everything you need bundled and presented nicely out-of-the-box.
Re:Netbeans and Eclipse (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have an ant-based project, the idea is that you can add some xml entries to the config files and your buildfiles to hook the gui commands to your targets. Sounds good, right?
Wrong. Netbeans takes the road that if you want to own the buildfile, you own everything. You have to write targets to run the program in the debugger, you have to manage the classpath, you have to write targets to run/compile/debug a single file, to run/compile/debug your whole project, etc etc and so on.
A few weeks ago I watched a coworker join my development project with eclipse. He took a copy of the source tree, pointed eclipse at the top level directory, and it promptly figured out the classpath. Running and debugging worked exactly as you expect. Adding support for the existing ant buildfile was also easy, and didn't interfere with what eclipse offered.
This impressed me, and my coworker convinced me to take it for a testdrive. I had previously spent about 3 weeks researching and arguing config files with netbeans, and I had eclipse ready to write production code in a few hours. (And that was my first time using the tool, now I can configure it much faster.)
Bottom line: eclipse is a tool which is much better thought out than netbeans. it offers alot more functionality to the debugger, alot less painfully. netbeans 4.1, whoopdeedoo. i'm sticking with eclipse.
Re:Netbeans and Eclipse (Score:2, Interesting)
All I have to say is that I percieve SWT to break the core reason for Java in the first place--write once, run anywhere. That will never be the case for SWT, and that is why SWT will always be marginalized. Try running your favorite SWT app (including Eclipse) on a Mac. Java was supposed to alleviate platform differences.
As an example, you mention ClearType. ClearType is a platform-specific technology, and although it looks pretty on SWT apps in Windows, running that same app on other platforms produces no benefit. Granted, sub-pixel rendering is a nice feature, but why not implement it at the LaF level, and not at the native peer-esque SWT level, so that it requires no extra platform-specific manipulation. The Mac OS Aqua LaF already does this quite well, and I'm sure the other Swing LaFs will have it soon. (Interesting to note, Java 5 now supports AA type, so sub-pixel hinting is sure to follow.)
Just because Swing started out slow doesn't mean it's not fully functional now. There are a bevy of good Swing apps (including NetBeans and JEdit) that are a testament to this fact. Also, you completely forget to mention the NetBeans platform as a viable alternative to Eclipse platform apps. So before you extoll Eclipse as the saviour of Java you may want to compare NetBeans on its merits, and not on your zeal for Windows-only Java apps.
You may want to debate C#/.NET, since it seems to be better positioned for what you appear to want to do.
Re:J2EE support is nice (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Netbeans and Eclipse (Score:3, Interesting)
The article may have been about Netbeans, but it was very much a comparison of Netbeans against Eclipse; Eclipse is mentioned twice in the Slashdot story.
You actually completely missed the intent of my comment, and in the same turn managed to embody the exact same defensive attitude I was describing. As Eclipse has grown in popularity, so has the poison spewed by Netbeaners; the Eclipse community, in fact, has been rather surprised and annoyed by the aggression. Calling somebody a "fanboy" is not exactly a step on the road to civilized discussion. Please do realize that I myself have not attacked Netbeans in any way: I merely explained Eclipse's position in relation to Sun's stuff.
As I was saying, Eclipse filled a demand that Sun/Swing/Netbeans could not satisfy: you may not accept it, but one of the major reasons Eclipse is so popular is precisely for the reasons I emphasized.
I'm not interested in converting anyone, and I'm quite happy letting you use your GUI emulation software and your IDE. But for me, and for countless other users and developers, Eclipse represents a different philosophy that makes more sense.
Anyone who has done any serious amount of work with Java knows that the "write once, run anywhere" mantra is an illusion.
Personally, I prefer the route taken by Ruby, Python etc.: provide solid standard libraries and abstractions of OS mechanisms, but generally let the user do whatever he likes. It's wonderfully easy to write cross-platform tools in Ruby, and you're not locked into a cage where you can't access OS primitives that the VM authors didn't think about including. (Unix domain sockets, real file locking and process control are some examples.)
It's also curious what this "anywhere" really means. Last I checked, FreeBSD still did not have a stable version of Java 1.4, let alone Java 5.0; compared to a platform such as Ruby or Python, Java's platform-portability is rather pitiful, and Sun's restrictive licensing does not help one bit.
I have no problems admitting that the current SWT implementation is flawed on OS X; but that's a problem with the implementation, not the concept. There's every reason why SWT can succeed on the Mac.
Sub-pixel rendering is related to monitor hardware, not platforms. I used the term ClearType in the general sense, not as in the Microsoft-trademarked stuff.
This is patently wrong. Other platforms that implement sub-pixel rendering will benefit because Eclipse uses their font rendering systems. On the Mac, Eclipse uses Carbon and thus gets sub-pixel rendering for free, just as on Windows. On Linux, Eclipse uses GTK+, which I believe also implements sub-pixel rendering at the toolkit level. Similarly, if GTK+ itself is upgraded with new features or optimizations, Eclipse apps immediately benefit; Swing apps do not.
Precisely because it's in the province of the GUI subsystem. An application should not need to implement a whole GUI subsystem.
For example, Eclipse apps can use TrueType and (if you have Adobe Type Manager installed) Type 1 fonts. Eclipse apps can use the native printing subsy
Re:SWT is faster than AWT (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM also complains about how the JCP is too controlled by Sun but if you look at the PMC's for the Eclipse projects you'll see a whole lote more IBM email addresses than anything else.
From everythingI've seen and read, Eclipse/SWT is a real dog on linux. Swing is slower on linux than on windows but not as bad as swt. I wish I could find the blog but I remember one of the netbeans developers mentioning he tried to lod the netbeans source tree in eclipse and it choked. I wonder what Eclipse developers are using to develop Eclipse? That's probably not a failing of SWT but for such a long time Eclipse fanatics have been talking about how slow netbeans it's nice to see blogs and forum postings talking about how people are switching to netbeans because of how slow eclipse has become.
"There are other downsides to NetBeans. NetBeans is ONLY a Java IDE. Eclipse on the otherhand is a platform for developing in various languages. NetBeans also has no capability, or desire for that matter (hello Sun), to run with FOSS implementations of the Java runtime. To me this is not a big deal but to others it might be."
Well, this is not the case. Netbeans is an open platform with a plug in architecture. It's had this since before ibm started pushing eclipse. There have been modules writen for c/c++ and fortran. Sun's development tool Sun Studio 10 is based on netbeans and it is for c/c++ and fortran. In fact when it was Forte there's this interesting blurb from this article [developer.com]:
For such a long time some Eclipse fanatics have been dismissing Netbeans because Netbeans was slow... well now eclise is slow.... Eclipse is a foundation for building your applications netbeans is just an idea... well... netbeans was a platform before eclipse was a foundation... eclipse has plugins.... netbeans has plugins too... you just don't need to hunt around for as many of them as you need for eclipse to be productive.... eclipse supports more languages... well good for them.. netbeans can too... My favorite... websphere studio is built on eclipse so if I learn eclipse I'll know websphere studio... HA! These people obviously haven't used websphere studio.As for these open java platforms? 1: you can get netbeans to develop applications targetted for them with a bit of setup even if you can't get neatbeans to compile and run on them... 2: why is it sun or netbean's fault of these open java platforms can't keep up?
I think there's a lot of people that need to wake up to what IBM is doing. Yeah they do some really good things but there's a lot more to the story.
Re:Eclipse very slow after loosing focus for a whi (Score:1, Interesting)
--Coder
Re:Plugins (Score:3, Interesting)
155000.0/1400000 * 100 = 11.07 %
ergo 30 % of NetBeans users think NetBeans Suck
11.07 % of Eclipse users think Eclipse Suck
Gues that's why I'm gonna try Eclipse before NetBeans - but I will try both.
Problem is one can rarely decide without doing more than just poke arround - that's why I need to test the waters based on other's opinions.