My First experience with NetBeans IDE 6.1

Hello everyone,

First post on NetBeans. More number of them yet to come.

Major improvements in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Features

I had been using Eclipse IDE all these days. Reason- had never thought NetBeans IDE was so powerful and so easy to use. But today i thought of trying it out. And to my shock its much faster than Eclipse. The time take for the Application to start is much lesser than the same in Eclipse IDE. I downloaded the version for Java SE– Thanks to the Internet Speed at my home- couldn’t afford for more. The breeze installation of NetBeans- was simply superb. I had to just key in the directory of installation and the only other time my response was required was only to click on “Finish“. Its said “First impression is the best Impression“. Thats what i felt after the installation.

One more thing i forgot to mention- There are many versions of NetBeans available. For more information visit the site here. One can even get a free DVD here.

Recently i have been using Microsoft Visual studio for my project. I had spoken to the person at the company where i am doing my project and he had told me that there is no editor as powerful as Microsoft Visual Studio and that too especially for Java and now i think i can give him a fitting reply- NetBeans IDE to the rescue.

After the installation i opened the Application from the start menu. Alas!!!! it was up and running in no time. Oh!!! i had to wait for ages for Eclipse IDE to start up 🙁 So another positive point there for NetBeans IDE…..

Now i did not have to waste much time in getting along with my work. But what work?. I had no work in my mind. So i just created a new Project. Even there i had whole lots of options to choose from. I had been thinking right from the moment i clicked on new project, to build a project related to Swing. And NetBeans provided me with a template sort of Desktop Application. So i chose from the new Projects menu- Java Desktop Application.

Soon after this i was shocked to see a complete GUI already built with- JMenuBar and Two JMenus, one JPanel, another JPanel which acted as Status Panel and a JProgressBar. So my work was reduced drastically. So now i could think on the main implementation part and leave the GUI part to NetBeans IDE Tools. Thats the best thing in NetBeans IDE. One can leave out the worries regarding building a GUI and can concentrate more on the Implementation aspect of the Project being developed. Building a GUI is just clicks away. There is a tool bar on the right hand side of the Application which contains all the Swing Tools- just click and then drag and drop- looks its so simple. Then there is also one thing called Properties. Every Swing Tool/ Object has certain Properties associated with them. There is a tool bar below the Swing Toolbar by name “Properties”. One can set Properties or Bindings or Events or Code of the particular swing object.

Using all these features i created a basic application which would take two points and draw a line. Can anyone imagine how much time i took to do that. Not even 5 minutes 😉

I suppose i couldn’t write more about here due to lack of experience in using NetBeans IDE. Today was the first time i used NetBeans IDE and i put up a post on my experience. I hope to put up a lot more in the future as my experience about the application increases.

I don’t see any point in quoting the technical features here. As they can be read any time from NetBeans homepage. I will provide the links for most of the necessary items.

Note: For Screen shots of the application IDE and how to start about here
( The tutorial consists of building Java application )

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Features
NetBeans Plugin Portal
NetBeans Docs and Support
NetBeans Community
NetBeans Partners