When Written: Nov 2006
Another development tool that has caught my eye is thanks very much to a colleague, DJ who I rate as one of the most knowledgeable Java developers that I know. The other day he was expounding the virtues of Java Net Beans IDE 5.5 with the Matisse interface builder.
This free open source tool has matured so much that, now with the Visual Web Pack add on, it offers the sort of ‘drag and drop’ design with a code hinting environment that users of Visual Studio have been used to. In fact the graphical design pane is better, in my opinion, than Visual Studio as it allows the sort of precise positioning of objects on web applications that we were used to when developing non-web applications.
The Open Source Java design tool Net Beans with Visual Web designer is just so cool
This development tool is truly awesome and, as it is infinitely flexible being open source, the possibilities for add-ons are almost endless. A lot of the design of a web application can be done with a simple drag and drop of any of the many components anywhere and then wired up using a right mouse click or two.
The Design view is so good you only need to preview it to test the functionality, much better than the Visual Web Studio experience. When you click the run icon, the web application is built and then previewed in a browser for you to test and here you can select any of the browsers installed on your system. This development tool will install and work on Windows, Linux and Macs.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton