Sun Unveils NetBeans 6.1 Beta

Not to be outdone by the confab for Eclipse developers at EclipseCon,
Sun Microsystems is announcing the beta of its NetBeans 6.1 integrated
development environment. Sun officials are announcing the availability
of NetBeans 6.1, which delivers a set of features for JavaScript
development, a key component for delivering AJAX Web applications and
tighter integration of MySQL database functionality. NetBeans is Sun's
open-source Java development tool set. Sun officials said the new
JavaScript support includes semantic highlighting, code completion,
type analysis, quick fixes, semantic checks and refactoring. In addition,
the NetBeans 6.1 beta has a browser compatibility feature that enables
developers to write JavaScript code that works in the Mozilla Firefox,
Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari Web browsers. Jim Parkinson, vice
president of tools and services at Sun, said that, since the release of
NetBeans 4.0, momentum and adoption have been strong, with more than
3.2 million downloads coming over the past two years: "With NetBeans 6.1,
we expect adoption rates to continue to go through the roof, especially
with the new JavaScript functionality and the tighter integration work
taking place with the MySQL database." According to the release notes,
NetBeans IDE 6.1 is a significant update to NetBeans IDE 6.0 and includes
the following changes: (1) A new window system that includes transparency;
(2) Sharability of projects: this new feature in default Java, Web and
all J2EE project types allows to create projects that share definitions
of libraries; that in turn allows to create self-contained projects or
set of projects that can be built from the command line, on continuous
integration servers and by users of other IDEs without problems; (3)
Javadoc and sources association: now any JAR item on the project classpath
can be associated with its Javadoc and sources too; (4) JSF CRUD Generator:
with this feature, you can generate a JavaServer Faces CRUD application
from JPA entity classes; (5) New MySQL support in Database Explorer:
this feature allows you to register a MySQL Server, view databases, view,
create, and delete databases, easily create and open connections to
these databases, and to launch the administration tool for MySQL. This
also allows you to easily create NetBeans sample databases so that
following tutorials, blogs, and so on is significantly easier. (6)
Inspect Members and Hierarchy Widnows: Inspect Members and Hierarchy
actions now work when the caret in the Java Editor is on a Java class
for which there is no source available. (7) Support for Java Beans: you
can now view Java Bean patterns in the Navigator and BeanInfo Editor.
(8) Javadoc Code Completion: editing of javadoc comments is more convenient
with code completion. (9) JavaScript support; (10) Spring Framework
Support; (11) On Demand Binding Attribute for Visual Web JSF projects;
(12) Axis2 support for web services; (13) SOAP UI integration for Web
Service testing and monitoring.