Joshua Marinacci's Blog

Netbeans M7 and the amazing new Web Start plugin

Milestone 7

Milestone 7 of NetBeans 6.0 recently came out and I tried it out for the first time today. Now I know what you are thinking: "Don't you work on NetBeans? Don't you work for NetBeans?!" Well yes, I do. But I'm working on a branch that hasn't migrated to the 6.0 codebase yet. It will in the future (and I'll have blogs on it) but for now what I see every day looks pretty much like NetBeans 5.5. Trying M7 is my first taste of NetBeans of the future (other than my own highly excellent work, of course. but more on that later :) .

So what do I think? Well, it's pretty. There's a new color scheme with new icons and I think it looks pretty good. IDE's are never known for their fantastic user interfaces but I think the designers did a good job on this one. It has a new sense of consistency that I really like. And it looks halfway decent on my Mac, which is something IDEs are almost always bad at!

So on to the new features. There's a new editor in there which I haven't played with much but it does feel faster to me. I don't know much about the EE features (since I don't do web programming) so I'll cover something that's very important to me: Java Web Start.

A New Java Web Start Module

In the past there were several Java Web Start modules available for NetBeans that were all quite horrible. One of them even generated JNLP files that would core dump on Mac! I've been wanting good Web Start support in my IDEs for some time and now we've finally got it.

Milan Kubec has been working on a new Web Start module that fully integrates with the project system. All you have to do is create a desktop application and click a checkbox in a new Project Properties pane. Then hit run and it'll do the right thing. Here's a screenshot to show you what I'm talking about:

The Application preferences panel

The Web Start preferences panel

How it works

There are two new panes. The first one lets you enter standard application attributes that are useful for any desktop application. Things like the name and splashscreen. The second pane is for Web Start specific properties like the icon and codebase attribute. All you need to do in order to enable Web Start is click the appropriately titled Enable Web Start checkbox and it will do the rest. When you hit build the module will generate a JNLP automatically, including the jars in your classpath and the location of your main method. That's it.

I love this module because it does the annoying work for you. The IDE already knows what jars I need and where my main class is. Now it can put all of that information to good use! Building a syntactically correct JNLP file without me lifting a finger. (Well, maybe just my mouse clicking finger).

What I love about this module is the ability to get a running application up on a website very, very quickly. You can create a new project, put together a form, then press build to assemble everything in the dist directory. This includes the jar, .jnlp, splashscreen and icon images, and any support jars. It's a dream. I've even heard from the developer that he hopes to add support for deploying the Web Start app directly to your webserver. (no promises though)

A note on Subversion

One thing to note about NetBeans 6.0 M7: the Subversion module requires Subversion 1.3 or greater to be installed on your computer. I upgraded to 1.3 manually several months ago, but the system default on Mac OS X 10.4 is still 1.2, so that's what NetBeans found. Rather than trying to modify your system wide path variable you can tell NetBeans the location of Subversion (or the correct version of Subversion) using the Subversion panel in the general options/preferences dialog. It's under Miscellaneous/Subversion. And thankfully you don't have to go to the advanced options to set it!

So go check it out. Excellent Java Web Start support, new icons, and tons of other stuff. NetBeans 6.0 M7.

Comments

• Desperately needed! But from that screenshot, support looks pretty minimal right now so far. Hope to see alot more in the future, there's a lot of Web Start features like information (title, vendor, author, description etc.), desktop and system menu shortcuts, file associations, update policy, permissions, and of course JAR signing and generating pack200 files. All sorts of stuff that I'd like to see done during builds.

  Posted by: benloud on February 27, 2007 at 07:32 PM

• oops, im blind, i see the information stuff is in the application tab. good good! the rest of the list is still valid though

  Posted by: benloud on February 27, 2007 at 07:35 PM

• yep, pack200/signing support would make usable for me, but I suppose that is planned for a future release?

  Posted by: francisdb on February 28, 2007 at 01:22 AM

• I don't get it, what is provided that is not in NetBeans 5.5? You still have to write your Ant script to do signing (always required for desktop apps anyway) and all the other things benloud and francisdb mentions.

  Posted by: mrmorris on February 28, 2007 at 05:50 AM

• What's the point? JWS is a failed deployment technology. It's great for technologists but is unsupportable in the real world. Why build a module for something as simple as putting together a simple XML JNLP file? Even more so, who actually uses JWS APIs in their applications that would need to debug it?

  Posted by: alski on February 28, 2007 at 06:20 AM

• Is that Webstart module different from the integrated one introduced about a year ago? It would be nice to see it support generating version files as well. Very nice!

  Posted by: evickroy on February 28, 2007 at 06:55 AM

• alski: that is FUD, pure and simple. There are *large* (> 200k user) deployments using Java WebStart in the banking industry, and countless other success stories. I'm willing to grant that you've had a bad experience, but do not make the mistake of labeling Java WebStart as "a failed deployment technology" when clearly there are those who are succeeding quite well with it!

  Posted by: rbair on February 28, 2007 at 09:59 AM

• BTW what is your jdk you are using? on my mac there are no ugly boxes around the buttons or comboboxes. or you have changed the color settings in the OS?

  Posted by: mkleint on February 28, 2007 at 10:31 AM

• mkleint hmm. 1.6 devleoper preview for mac. oddly, i just ran M7 again and now I don't see the boxes.

  Posted by: joshy on February 28, 2007 at 11:34 AM

• This is fantastic! Pack200 support would be really really tops - it's too complicated to setup manually so an automatic IDE tool like this could make it usable.Thanks,Keith

  Posted by: commanderkeith on February 28, 2007 at 06:50 PM

• commanderkeith I've had pretty good success getting Pack200 to work using Ant tasks, but I agree it would be even nicer to have it all built in.

  - Josh

  Posted by: joshy on March 01, 2007 at 04:58 PM

• Joshy, br/ br/
  Regarding Webstart in Netbeans: Like Billy Crystal use to say, "You look marvelous!" Making Webstart easier and easier I think is key. Should developer's really ever need to see the JNLP xml at all? I think the new netbeans should allow the user to modify, but practically never feel a need too.
  br/
  br/

  -Carl

  Posted by: carldea on March 07, 2007 at 07:16 PM

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