N E T B E A N S    6.0

In my last blog I stated I'm trying different different technologies besides Java on the web. This blog takes us back to Java.  Netbeans is an open source IDE for Java that spun off from Sun's Forte IDE (later known as Sun Studio).  The original Forte had drag and drop components for web and desktop development (at least Sun Studio does; been a while since I used Forte).  Netbeans has always lacked drag and drop development until now, with the almost released 6.0.  6.0 can be downloaded from www.netbeans.info/downloads/dev.php

The only version of 6.0 that's currently available is the daily build, so it's not even in the beta phase yet. However, after trying it out, I suggest anybody interested in building Java desktop applications should download it. Here's an example of something I whipped up in just a few minutes after using 6.0

I think the purpose of the app is pretty obvious. A date can be chosen from the spinner, and then after clicking on the "Get Day" button, the day of the week appears in the label below the spinner. My first app using Netbeans 6.0, and it just took a few minutes to create.   The only problem I found with the IDE was in the initialization of the spinner. The IDE lets you set an initial date, an earliest date, a latest date, and an increment for the spinner. However, after I built the app, the spinner's initial date was incorrectly set to the latest date.  The spinner wouldn't even accept input, so I checked out the code Netbeans had created for me. All the initialization dates were set to the latest date. I changed the dates by hand to the values I wanted, saved all and rebuilt; got a working app.

I think the drag and drop development feature is a great addition to Netbeans, and anybody interested in building desktop apps in Java should download 6.0.  If somebody is unfamiliar with Java, it would've taken them a lot longer then me to find the bug in the spinner component, but looking for the bug would've helped them learn Java; this is a great learning tool! In fact, if somebody is really unfamiliar with Java, they probably wouldn't have known they could change the spinner to a date type, and have just used three spinners to get a MM/DD/YYYY date. The Java newbie would then have to look up how to create a date or Calendar object, and coded from there; still a learning experience!

Maybe 6.0 is still in the development stage, but I think it's worth downloading now!