NetBeans IDE

 Tal Maoz
 Na’ama Zahavi
Agenda
 Introduction to IDE
 NetBeans History & Overview
 NetBeans Matisse
 How To Get Started
 Detailed Demos
Introduction to IDE
 An Integrated Development
Environment is a computer software
to help computer programmers develop
software.

 The Leaders:
- NetBeans
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Eclipse
.Introduction to IDE- cont
 What does an IDE consist of:
- Source code Editor.

- Compiler and/or interpreter.

- Build- automation tools.

 Optional Tools:
- Debugger.

- Version control system.

- Various tools to simplify the construction of a

GUI.
.Introduction to IDE- cont
 Tools For Object Oriented Design:
- Object inspector.

- Class Browser.

- Class hierarchy diagram.

?Why Do We Need An IDE

 IDE abstracts the configuration necessary to piece

together various utilities in one unit, which could ease
the learning of a language, and increases developer
productivity.

 Most IDEs today have GUI modeling utilities that

simplify the development of UIs, which is critical for
commercial software today.
The History Of NetBeans
 It all started as a student project called Xelfi

 The Goal was to write a Delphi- like Java IDE in Java

for the first time.

 The original plan was to develop network-enabled

JavaBeans components, hens the name. but coming
out of the spec for enterprise changed the plans.

 Sun decided it needs a more powerful Java

development tool, and the rest is history.
About NetBeans
 A fast fully-featured Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) with support for Java.

 Compliant applications for accelerating development

across all major OS platforms.

 Provides an open source, high performance, modular,

extensible, multi-platform Java IDE for GUI, mobile
tools, Web, and Desktop applications.

 Written in java and therefore runs on every operating

system that supports Java VM.
NetBeans Features
 Environment: easily configured user interface and a
modular architecture extensible with additional plugins.

 Project System: support for multiple source roots,

easy management of libraries, easily ported to other
environments, all based on Apache Ant.

 Web Development: Web Application project type,

Supports the J2EE 1.3 and 1.4 standards with web
application build support based on Apache Ant.
.NetBeans Features - Cont
 Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) Development: easy to
create and deploy and import java beans.

 Web Services Development: wizards for creating

web services and web services clients, providing the
basic (java/wsdl) code needed, and easy to use testing
tools of existing web services.

 Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) MIDP

development: visual design editor with end-to-end
support for enterprise applications.
.NetBeans Features - Cont
 Code Editor: Syntax highlighting for Java, XML,
HTML, CSS, JSP and IDL, full support of new JDK 1.5
features, live parsing/error marking, popup javadoc,
code completion, and fast class importing.

 Refactoring: renaming, changing and moving of

various objects, field encapsulation and usage finding.

 Award Winning Debugger: Language independent

debugger core, variable modification and watches,
various breakpoints and “Fix and Continue”
mechanism.
.NetBeans Features - Cont
 GUI Builder: fully WYSIWYG designer with "Test
Form" feature, extensible Component Palette pre-
installed Swing and AWT components, showing a
components tree and properties, automatic code
generation and full JavaBeans support.

 Version control Support: supports command lined

vcs, supplying merging and diff tools and containing a
built- in CVS client.

 XML: XML, DTD and CSS Text Editor and XML

Productivity Tools Wizards to help user generate
codes.  
NetBeans Extras
 NetBeans Profiler: provides information about the
runtime behavior of applications. Allows developers to
monitor the thread state, CPU performance, and
memory usage of their applications. makes it easy to
track down performance problems and memory leaks.

 NetBeans Platform: provides the services common to

almost all large desktop applications such as: window,
menu, settings management and storage, file access
and more.
.NetBeans Extras - Cont
 NetBeans Mobility Pack: used to write, test, and
debug applications for the Java Micro Edition platform
(J2ME) technology-enabled mobile devices. It
integrates support for the Mobile Information Device
Profile (MIDP) 2.0, the Connected, Limited Device
Configuration (CLDC) 1.1.

 The mobility pack allows for the unique “On-Phone”

debugging mode.
NetBeans Matisse
 The biggest
improvement from the
previous version and the
feature with the biggest
impact is the new GUI-
Builder, Matisse.
.NetBeans Matisse - Cont
 The Goal: to take the best features from OSX and VS
designers and allow the same possibilities for Java
Programmers.

 In order to reach that goal there was a need to develop

a new layout manager to support all the needed
functionalities.
.NetBeans Matisse - Cont
 Matisse provides a simple and intuitive layout of GUIs
without having to understand the complexities of
Swing layout managers.
 As you drag and drop components into a form, the IDE
automatically suggests alignment, spacing, and
resizing constraints.
 By simply right clicking a UI Object you can add an
event handler with a method waiting to be
implemented without knowing too much about the
surrounding of this object. (watch example clip in the
site)
NetBeans Matisse - Advantages
 For the first time, there’s an intelligent way to build GUI
for Java (unlike eclipse), that can actually compete
with the Visual Studio Gui builder.

 Supports internationalization, and industrial look-and-

feel rules, which is very important for large scale
application meant to be spread world wide.

 Builds also GUI web applications, HTML, JSP, etc

NetBeans Matisse - Disadvantages

 No built-in support for Drag-n-Drop or double-click

events.

 Matisse’s code is protected so customizing is not very

easy and not always possible.

 Not all applications are easily built. For instance, an

MDI Project is not that trivial to build
?How To Get Started
 How to install
 A Quick start Guide
 Importing existing applications
 Advanced
Installation

1. Installing JDK: in order to install NetBeans you

need to first install JDK. You can easily find an
installation in Sun’s web site.

1. NetBeans installation: you can find the installations

kits for all the versions in the NetBeans home page.

1. Installation steps: you can watch a movie

describing the installation step by step in the.
Quick Start Guide

1. Starting up a project
2. Creating and editing java source code
3. Compiling and running a project
4. Testing and debugging a project
Starting Up A Project
 Creating a new project: in the file menu choose
“new project” and look at the possibilities.
.Starting Up A Project - Cont
 When creating a new project, NetBeans already
includes all the needed packages for compiling and
testing. It also outlines the sources by the right
logical directories and creates the files that are
mandatory. For instance, if you create a new java
application you must implement a main class and so
it’s automatically created.
Editing and Refactoring
 When editing a code you can see the difference
between the old version and the new version when
using the Code Completion tool.

 You can use “Find Usage” tool when working on a

project to predict the changes you will need to make.

 You can use refactoring to easily change places of

things without going through all the code to change it.
Building and Running
 No makefile or manual creation of an Ant file needed
(by default). A simple instruction saying which class to
run and what to build will suffice. Netbeans will create
the Ant file automatically.

 While Building you can also generate the javadoc very

easily.
Testing
 JUnit Tests: you simply choose
the class you want to test and in
the tools menu choose “create
JUnit Test”. After filling the
arguments NetBeans
automatically creates a test
class inheriting from TestCase
with the default methods to
implement and puts everything
under the Test package.
Debugging
 NetBeans has two modes, run mode and debug mode.

 The debug mode is very easy to use.

 You can use the local variables window and watch

window to follow the progress of the program.