As a technology evangelist for NetBeans I obviously spend a lot of my time showing developers all of the great new features in the IDE. Two of those new features are the Matisse GUI Builder and the Visual Mobile Designer, both of which allow for drag-and-drop GUI development. So we've got rich client development covered in both the J2SE and J2ME spaces, but what about J2EE? The common question I always get is 'Do you have a WSIWIG JSP editor'? In NetBeans, no. However, we have a separate product that does just that, and it generates JSF compliant code to boot. It's called Java Studio Creator. And you'll see from their home page that you can get it for $99.

However, I know any outlay of money can be a deterrent. Well, guess what? Today, if you go to the netbeans.org home page, you'll see a link to get Creator for free!. Yes, that's free as in beer, lunch, et al.

All that's required is that you be a member of the Sun Developer Network (which you should be already, because it's also free). Once you log into SDN, the license to unlock Creator will be emailed to you. So then just download, install, set the license, and start creating. Here's a short tutorial to get you started.