Malcolm Davis's Blog: Why are you uninstalling NetBeans IDE?

After 3 pages of notes, I surmised that the NetBeans team still doesn't get it. It is look and feel, it is user experience, it is the GUI experience on the Windows platform.

The following are some minor complaints after a few hours of playing around with NetBeans:

Fonts: The first thing I noticed was NetBeans fonts. The fonts look gritty, and are missing the smoothness of anti-alias. Recommendation: Fix the lettering by using system fonts. If Swing has issues system fonts, fix Swing. If Swing cannot be fixed, develop new technology that works correctly.

Key Bindings: I try my best NOT to use a mouse, so I may be more sensitive than others to the lack of the natural systems key bindings. In the Windows OS, the + and - keys open and close a selected tree branch, the * key expands the entire branch to display all the children elements. However, the NetBeans trees do not work as expected. Recommendation: The natural key bindings of the OS should be used. The key bindings are part of the 'feel' of an OS, and are a significant element in the user experience. I shouldn't have to re-gear my brain when switching between applications. If Swing has issues with key bindings, fix Swing. If Swing cannot be fixed, develop new technology that works correctly.

Help: I thought by now NetBeans developers would have their head around Help. I decided to search help for Anti-Alias. Rather than return a 'nothing found' message, the search just seemed to do nothing. I searched for things I knew existed and a bunch of red-dots, numbers and text appeared.

I left Help open as I worked. As I opened dialogs, Help would pop to the top and align itself with the dialog. The popping to the top behavior became annoying at times, and the Help screen jumped to different locations on the screen.

Recommendation: Drop the red-dots. The red dots don't provide any visible value, and the dots eat up real estate that could be used to display more text. The hit numbers are not properly right aligned. Additionally, the text results needs to line up; the tiered affect makes it more difficult to scan. I was disappointed with the Help mechanism, and the lack of basic Help features.

Help Note: A nifty help mechanism provided with PHP is User contributed notes. The notes are appended to the original help documentation. Any page in help could contain notes contributed by the community. I found the notes useful when configuring, learning and using PHP.

Auto-complete: After creating a project and jumping into the main program, the first thing I tested was the auto-complete feature by inserting a File import statement. (Note: Normally I allow the IDE to automatically fill-in the imports, however I was in 'kicking the tires' mode,) I was aiming for import java.io.File; and things went as expected until I got to the f in File. I was expecting the File classname to be displayed at the top of the list, from which I could simply hit the return key. Instead, a list of macro names was displayed rather than classnames. [BTW, Eclipse does not provide the correct behavior either. Eclipse wants to do import java.io.*;. However, with Eclipse I can use the hot key (ctrl+space) and get the correct behavior]. Recommendation: Where broken, fix the Auto-complete behavior.

Not all bad
NetBeans contains a rich set of features such as the Macro Recorder and Player, and items like printing are much better in NetBeans then Eclipse. I'm sure there are a great number of aspects I would enjoy about NetBeans, however after 2 hours of staring at non-system fonts, I had enough.

Usability Snafu
By no means, did I cover all the Snafus I found in my simple system test. I'm not getting paid to be a NetBeans tester. NetBeans might want to find a real Windows person to tear into NetBeans look and feel. Maybe that way, the NetBeans developers will understand the pain people like myself are feeling.

NetBeans defenders
There are people that will defend NetBeans and Swing at any cost. Believe it or not, this blog is not a bash of NetBeans or Swing. If NetBeans' IDE is designed for Solaris, and works well on Solaris, great. [Note: NetBeans is far better than the last version of Microsoft VisualStudio. I spent 4 months with VisualStudio 2003 and thought I was going to hang myself. I'm surprised that Microsoft could get away with charging for such a piece of junk.]

Nevertheless, Java was pushed as the transparent way of developing cross platform UI. In my minds eye, NetBeans should be the realization of the transparency. If Sun, the Java community, and/or NetBeans team, no longer desire that transparency, then in my own opinion a big opportunity is being missed.

I know I'm whipping a dead horse in regards to Java UI development. I just wish Sun would turn some of the energy from hyping NetBeans to solving the real UI problem. If Sun solved the real problem, many of NetBeans issues would resolve themselves, and NetBeans would require little hyping.

To see the fruition of a truly portable UI, should I rely on SWT, third party libraries, another technology entirely, or should Sun finally step up to the plate and make it happen?

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Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment

Interesting. From my part, I've installed NetBeans from the cd I've got on Sun tech days in Toronto because they promised that one of the cd's can win some prise. Uninstalled immediately after verifying that there was no prise for me. :-)

Posted by: euxx on February 13, 2006 at 09:09 PM

Project creation from build.xml

Considering the vast majority of project imports are from existing code; It baffles me why NetBeans makes this so f*@&ing difficult! >:-(

In contrast; I just point Eclipse to an Ant script, and it is completely ready to go. :-)

That's why I uninstalled NetBeans 5.

However, ever the optimist; I still look forward to the release of NetBeans 6!

Posted by: cajo on February 13, 2006 at 09:25 PM

well said, malcom. I also uninstalled Netbeans for similar reasons. Admittedly there are lots of things
Netbeans does that is great, but there are some basic things like look-and-feel that seems to elude the team.

Think I'll stick with Eclipse for the time being, even though it isn't perfect.

Posted by: bookofjamesdotcom on February 13, 2006 at 10:31 PM

If you're seeing non-system fonts, that's very curious - NetBeans goes out of the way to set this up right on startup - I can even point you to the code that does it. Do you have different fonts set up by default for your system, or is there any other difference?

Re antialiasing, try using a mustang build - with JDK 6, subpixel antialiasing, etc. work out of the box.

Re the imports and code completion, try instead referring to the class and then using the popup hint (alt-enter) to add the import.

Posted by: timboudreau on February 13, 2006 at 10:33 PM

I'm not a huge fan of Netbeans; I use Intellij IDEA. Eclipse seems like a long-running and unfunny joke.

I haven't un-installed Netbeans 5 yet... but then I'm using a Mac, so there is no install/uninstall. When will Windows ever get that [un]installers are rarely necessary?

Because I'm using a Mac, I get nice anti-aliased text, so no complaints there. Even with Java 1.4.

I don't use NB5 much, though, because it's slow and lacks a rich set of coding tools (compared to IDEA, but it's getting there), however, I do like the way projects are built (all ant xml).

I'm with you on key-bindings however, but from a different angle: why F12 to go to next error? that's the standard dashboard key on a Mac... why F9 to compile? that's exposé?

Apparent lack of subversion support?

Posted by: goron on February 13, 2006 at 11:38 PM

NetBeans 5 is a big improvement, especially if I compare it to my over a year experience with 3.3, which was simply terrible. The ANT integration (since 4 I believe) and Matisse are nice. The maven2 plugin works well.
Now I prefer NetBeans over Eclipse.

1) NetBeans is missing decent Subversion integration.
2) NetBeans is missing decent refactoring rename support.
When I rename a class BarService to BorService, it should ask me to rename FooBarService to FooBorService, ask me to rename any variable barService to borService (+ getters and setters), find it in my xml files, ...

Still, IntelliJ stays my favorite:
Download IntelliJ's shortcut list and try ever single one out, you'll know what I mean. Especially ctrl-n, ctrl-shift-n (to select a class or resources) works with more efficient then in NetBeans or Eclipse.

Posted by: ge0ffrey on February 14, 2006 at 04:32 AM

When I uninstalled NetBeans 5 it was purely because I still feel IntelliJ IDEA does most things better. I will say however that when I go back to doing more web services work I'll be re-installing it since IMO that is one area where NetBeans is simply head and tails above IDEA.The UI in NetBeans does look somewhat clunky, I'd agree with that but I'm not sure that is all down to Swing since JetBrains have managed to make IDEA with Swing look at least as good (IMO) as Eclipse.Overall I believe NetBeans 5 to be an excellent IDE (4.1 was its breakout release). Eclipse is still the 'cool' IDE but I've personally never got on with it and would always choose one of the other big three (IDEA, NetBeans or JDeveloper - in that order) instead. Thousands of developers love Eclipse and find it to be extremely productive, it's a very good IDE, it's just not for me. NetBeans with improved UI could be.

Posted by: rangerrob on February 14, 2006 at 04:35 AM

Keybindings a problem because they're not the same as all other key bindings in Windows? Hmmm, I'd rather work on different environments in the same way when using the same tool than the same way for all tools in the same environment. It is also easier to explain to someone that uses Linux while you're using Windows on what to do next. It also simplifies and therefor leaves less room for errors in the manuals and help files.
Thanks to the NB developers, you can assign your own mappings to keys and you can even use other people's mappings.

Anti aliased fonts a problem? Hmmm, I think that ever since I got around using Mustang I can see what the fuss is about, but even so, I don't see why this is a major gripe.

Help files that don't cover everything can be annoying when they don't cover matters they should. Anti aliasing is in my opinion a JDK issue, and would be an issue for NB if turning it on is a stable and true NB feature.

My feeling is getting to a point, that I am old fashioned in that I am more about that an IDE should integrate my development tools and have them readily available, flexible enough to tailor it operations in a way that makes me most productive. I know that many consider Eclipse in that department superior and some features in Eclipse are way better than in NetBeans, I'm not sure which, but that is more because I do a lot of J2ME development and NetBeans is better at that. Looking at Eclipse's GUI, I think it looks marvelous, but anything from Windows-like. Its keybindings are more productive, but only when you're used to them.

I'm not sure about IntelliJ, it has been long since I've used it, 2 releases back maybe, but than again, I like NetBeans' J2ME coverage, and the feature list of IDEA is not promising enough to make me install it.

Iwan

Posted by: ieising on February 14, 2006 at 05:35 AM

Malcolm,Thanks for pointing out those things that "just aren't right".... It seems to always be "the little things" that keep us from adopting a tool, for years I stayed with Eclipse because the NetBeans "replace dialog" bugged me (they've since addressed my concern).If people don't speak up, things don't get fixed.

That said, we really do need a strong Eclipse, and a strong NetBeans, and a strong IntelliJ, etc.
We are not all the same, we have different preferences, we have different styles... I do not believe there will ever be a one size fits all IDE.

--JohnR

Posted by: johnreynolds on February 14, 2006 at 06:28 AM

NetBeans team did a great job with the gui builder, and for that I switched from eclipse to NetBeans IDE. I am confident that all the glitches will be solved with the future releases.

Posted by: azeddine on February 14, 2006 at 07:18 AM

I'm currently using Eclipse (with MyEclipse) but I actually like NetBeans better. I didn't have much choice as my group at work chose for me. I could probalby list off just as many things that Eclipse does that I don't care for (lame tabs, poor integration of plug-ins with core, reliance on plug-ins for everything useful, background processing dialog that won't go away if you open it, error-stripe items have too small a clickable zone, displaying jar files where they really aren't (might be MyEclipse on this one?), too many view panes get in the way primary usable area (double-clicking a tab to full-size it is NOT a solution), etc.). Neither is perfect.

But guess what, both are open-source and you have every right to spend your time helping fix bugs and add enhancements instead of complaining. I haven't seen the font issue myself, and suspect you didn't try hard enough to figure out what the real issue was. Did you even ask anyone for help? I haven't found the perfect IDE yet, and I'm sure never will, but NB and Eclipse are both good ones and worthy of full-time use, despite minor issues.

Posted by: gerryg on February 14, 2006 at 09:58 AM

I like this post, constructive criticism is always good. And I think it's great that people are comparing Netbeans and Eclipse. Eclipse is a nice IDE and it says something when folks start comparing Netbeans to it. At least they're both finally in (roughly) the same league.

I used to use Eclipse. I think it's a great IDE in many ways, but I do most of my development on the Mac and Eclipse doesn't run as nicely there as it does on Windows. With Netbeans 5.0, I've started using it as my main IDE. It's definilty got areas that it can improve, but man-o-man have the Netbeans contributers been busy, it's really come along way with the last 2 releases (4.1 and 5.0). I also find it's very good for J2EE (or ist it JEE now?) development.

Posted by: bschlining on February 14, 2006 at 11:22 AM

The worst thing that you can comment on it is about Fonts and Keybindings? I really wonder how well your project manager would take it if you said to him "I'm not going to use our IDE, because I don't like the fonts.".

Damn shame you are not willing to use a very impressive profiler, an amazing GUI editor, great collaberation tools...etc just because of fonts.

Did you even bother to enable anti-aliasing?
Did you even bother to change the fonts?
Did you even bother to change the keymappings?

Perhaps you should go a step further and uninstall your OS...

Posted by: atehrani on February 14, 2006 at 11:27 AM

Hello atehrani.

FONTS: I went out of my way to research the font problem. I could not locate anything in the help, on the web, etc. I thought that changing fonts was going to be a simple thing to fix. Instead I couldn't find anything on the topic.
KEY BINDING:

Why should I have to spend time configuring key bindings for my OS?
Tree behavior is tree behavior. When I build or use a Java tree element, the tree should work the way trees work for the deployed OS.
The problem is conceptual simple, for the developer and user of the tree, difficult for the person creating the reusable tree component

Posted by: malcolmdavis on February 14, 2006 at 11:52 AM

Fonts:

Launch Netbeans 5.0
Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Editor Settings -> Text Antialiasing (check mark that)

If you do not like the antialiasing and or you wish to change your fonts.

Tools -> Options -> Fonts & Colors

Do these settings not meet your needs? If so, why?

Key Bindings:

Why should I have to spend time configuring key bindings for my OS?

Because you stated that you do not like the default settings. The fact that you have the ability to change them, yet you opted to uninstall the product, is poor judgement on your part.

There are other platforms out there and forcing one platform's keybinding over another is (Windows vs *NIX) is a bad idea. Having uniform behaviour across platforms is ideal. Eclipse under any platform other than Windows is poor.

I encourage you to try the GUI editor and the profiler, those alone should be enough to continue to use Netbeans. Remember!; it is a tool and as such, should be judged on how well it does it's job. You don't judge a hammer on what color it is, but more on how well it drives a nail.

Posted by: atehrani on February 14, 2006 at 12:45 PM

atehrani
Fonts and Help:
Thanks for the link to Antialiasing. I looked in the NetBeans help and found Antialiasing, but help did not return results for ‘anti’ or ‘aliasing’. A help that only works on exact matches is not very helpful.

Made the Antialiasing change, and nothing happened. Hmmm. Restarted the NetBeans platform and nothing happened. Looked at the font settings and no systems fonts are listed. Hmmm. Looks like a bug to me.

Key Bindings:
"There are other platforms out there and forcing one platform's keybinding over another is (Windows vs *NIX) is a bad idea." Having uniform behavior across platforms is ideal.
Comment: Absolute bull. The idea is to have similar behavior for similar controls on the same OS, NOT to have the exact same behavior for a control on different OS. This same 'behavior' on different OS is why NetBeans worked horribly on a Mac for so long. By your arugument, NetBeans should have made NO exceptions for the OS when porting the product to different OS environments.

Hammer analogy: Does it fit your hand is one of the important qualities when choosing a hammer. If NetBeans fits yours, great. NetBeans does not fit mine, yet.

Posted by: malcolmdavis on February 14, 2006 at 01:18 PM

So happy you pointed out the font issue. This isn't just a NetBeans issue...you see it on the WebStart splash screen, where you are treated to jagged edged fonts.

I think it stems from solaris users, who are treated to lame fonts all day on every application. They don't recognize the difference over time.

Posted by: tcowan on February 14, 2006 at 02:54 PM

Re: Fonts and antialiasing

If it is subpixel AA that you want, as timboudreau has already pointed out, it is a JDK issue rather. Launch other Swing apps in Java 5 and below and you won't get subpixel AA. You get the normal AA which is quite ugly IMO.

I run NB with a Java 6 (mustang) preview release and the fonts are rendered beautifully, not just in the code editor but in the menus and trees etc. I recognise that not everyone will be willing to try a preview release but it is silly to blame NB for a Java bug.

Posted by: grimlock81 on February 14, 2006 at 03:30 PM

I have been using netbeans on windows for years now, I am currently still using netbeans 4.1. While 5.0 may introduce many new features it is new so obviously will have some new bugs and new irritations. NB4.1 is extremely stable, has great GUI support, has always supported the latest JDK, has great forum support, supports j2me, great support for deployment to application servers etc... There is almost nothing you can't do with NB and it does most things very well.
Also, NB is highly configurable so if you dont like how it is setup by default, change the settings and share them people that prefer your settings. I believe that fonts and keybindings are minor details in terms of a programmers productivity, while stability, speed and functionality are very important. That is why i will continue to use netbeans until something definately better comes out and i'm not sure will happen when NB is improving and adding new features so quickly.
As for swing, you can create stunning, fast rendering GUI applications very quickly once you get your head around the framework. Swing is complicated but does work well and predictably when you program it correctly and Netbeans definately make swing programming easy.

Posted by: dutchiedave on February 14, 2006 at 03:37 PM

About the fonts, they are a problem in Swing and they WERE fixed in Swing in Java 6. Download the beta of Mustang to find out, you can run Netbeans under Mustang while compiling and running your application with an older version of Java!
About the code completion it seems that you missed a few things:
1. By default Netbeans uses case sensitive code completion (you can change that in the preferences).
2. To import a package or a class use Alt-Shift-i which will add an import to a class/package or convert the name to fully qualified.

About the keybindings: I didn't know about the +/- support in trees, I always used enter. I assume the developers of Swing didn't know about this either, yes its a bug but a minor one.

No one said Netbeans was bug free and no one "defends" Netbeans. The question is what are the specific things that bother you... Netbeans has problems and strengths, its strengths far out weigh its weaknesses for MY particular needs.

Posted by: vprise on February 14, 2006 at 11:03 PM

"In contrast; I just point Eclipse to an Ant script, and it is completely ready to go. :-)"

Ha! Eclipse won't import an existing ant script that doesn't use javac - I use the exec task to run the compiler. Changing my ant script to use javac directly causes it to still not work because it cannot seem to deal with variables that are defined in files imported (a guess... I haven't had time to figure it out for certain).

Netbeans on the other hand will import it and run it, I just have a hell of a time managing all of the files needed to get the Netbeans parser happy... but there ins't going to be a way around that.

Posted by: darcy on February 14, 2006 at 11:50 PM

I'm surprised with the antialiasing issue, as it is working fine for me (on Mac OS X and Linux Fedora Core 4).

I'm using NetBeans for a simple J2SE project, with no GUI. So at the moment I don't need either the J2EE support nor Matisse, which I understand are two good features of NetBeans.

Adding my comments to others, working just at simple J2SE level, I find it's disappointing the lack of a code formatter. You can just control indentation and if putting the opening braces on a newline. OTOH Eclipse has a very powerful and fine-grained embedded code formatter. In my experience a code formatter to impose a unique coding style to all the members of a project is really important, because when you have to check diffs and such you won't be distracted by a lot of clutter just because a programmer placed a blank in a different way than another (BTW, also the CVS/Diff support is good, but inferior to Eclipse). Yes, I know that there's the Jalopy plugin, but you must pay for it, while in Eclipse everything comes for free. While a few bucks are not really a difference in a funded project, for opensource having all the basic stuff for free is really important IMHO.

Posted by: fabriziogiudici on February 15, 2006 at 01:11 AM

Something must have eclipsed your mind...

Get a grip dude, and reinstall, I'm sure your HD can afford the additional 100-150MB it will take up.

First of all you can modify settings to good degree in the advanced preferences, there even is an anti-alias feature - but until Java 6 (Mustang) this won't really be usable, I can recommend increasing the font size a little bit.

Help system? What are you blathering about? I hope you are kidding... If not I suggest you start writing a better help system, contribution of this sort is primariliy driven by people with a need.

"I'm not getting paid to be a NetBeans tester."
I think we all know this fact, since you only just briefly fiddled with the help system, fonts and auto-complete.

- I'd say you're pretty much bashing at hot air..

p.s. I love your reccomendations to the developers:
Recommendation: Where broken, fix the Auto-complete behavior.

Only an oracle could come up with such a recommendation, he he ;)

Posted by: warpgiga on February 15, 2006 at 08:52 AM

Uninstall - no problem, it won't install.
I keep getting a message that it can not utilize startclass

Fix is supposed to invole sufficient room in TEMP but
no amount of deleting made a difference.

Gosh, if it need more space why didn't it just ask for it ?

Posted by: seapwc on February 15, 2006 at 09:20 AM

warpgiga
reinstall
Get a grip dude, and reinstall, I'm sure your HD can afford the additional 100-150MB it will take up.
I did reinstall to test out peoples recommendations.

anti-alias
there even is an anti-alias feature - but until Java 6 (Mustang)
Doesn't help most of us developing for Java 1.4 and 5.0. I can use Eclipse and get anti-alias now.

Help system?
..suggest you start writing a better help system..
I will agree that it is easy to be a critic, and you and several others have mentioned that I get involved.

I'm involved in my local community. I attend city council and zoning meetings.
I conduct talks at local JUG and IEEE events.
I'm heavily involved with my 3 young children. I spend 10-20 hours a week coaching sports.

I'm sick of the insane comments I constantly hear of 'just get involved', or 'go fix yourself'. I took the time to download, install, mess with the product, and write a blog. Why don't you get a grip and understand that not everybody has the time to get involved in Open Source projects. Have you served your country, are you involved with your community, do you attend local JUG meetings, do you have children, do you have a life?

brief review
I think we all know this fact, since you only just briefly fiddled with the help system, fonts and auto-complete.
I did much more then review the help system, fonts and auto-complete, such as work with the cool macro recorder, printing, and many other things that I didn't bother to discuss. I only took a subset of my notes to blog to control the length of the blog, and my limited bandwidth to compose the blog.

oracle rant
Only an oracle could come up with such a recommendation, he he ;)
It is absolute amazing the number of things I found goofy or just wrong with NetBeans. However, I did not want this to turn into a bash of NetBeans. I'm very glad that Java 6.0 is fixing Swing behavior, and maybe 6.0 will help make NetBeans the premier IDE.

Posted by: malcolmdavis on February 15, 2006 at 09:37 AM

LOL.
Your remarks are absolutely enjoyable. And agreeable.
Though Eclipse is not the best of IDE (it lacks J2EE things...), I still find it rocks very well.
I tried netbeans many times, all the version. The 3.x trunk didn't suit me for that strange idea of "mount fielsystem". The 4.x series (and 5 is the same), still has that awful L&F. AND I CAN'T STAND USING COURIER AS EDITOR FONT... I have glasses and need bright font. FixedSys is my choice. Swing can't use it in any way. Bad, bad, bad.

"If Swing has issues with ..., fix Swing. If Swing cannot be fixed, develop new technology that works correctly."

You know... maybe someone just changed a letter in AWT and got it quite good...

Posted by: lmollea on February 16, 2006 at 05:57 AM

malcolmdavis:
anti-alias
there even is an anti-alias feature - but until Java 6 (Mustang)
Doesn't help most of us developing for Java 1.4 and 5.0. I can use Eclipse and get anti-alias now.
You can run NetBeans on Mustang and still develop for Java 1.4. NetBeans project system doesn't care what JDK do you use for NetBeans. The important is JDK assigned to your project.

Posted by: jbecicka on February 16, 2006 at 11:39 AM

re Help:
FWIW, Sun help writers and engineers worked with the JDK team to fix a long-standing modality annoyance in AWT that enabled us to disable the jumping around behavior (itself a workaround for more pernicious focus problems) and this fix should be working if you are on JDK 1.5_04 or higher. If you are working on such a JDK and it's still not working, please let us know.

Posted by: pkeegan on February 16, 2006 at 12:43 PM

Font anti-alias ?
This feature is available. The Tools->Option->Advanced Options->Editing->Edtior Settings->Text Antialiasing check this box.

Posted by: stevegy on February 18, 2006 at 05:56 PM

stevegy As I mentioned earlier, unless JDK 6.0 is being used, the font-alias does not work on the Windows platform.

Posted by: malcolmdavis on February 18, 2006 at 06:04 PM

malcolmdavis are u sure? i am using jdk 1.5 now and this feature is working on my Winxp.

Posted by: stevegy on February 21, 2006 at 08:09 AM

Hi Malcolm,

Thanks for your excellent review.

I too wasn't happy with the fonts running Sun Java Studio Creator
(currently based on Netbeans 4.x)
until I switched to one of the new 20 inch screen iMacs with dual core
Intel chips. Apple's JVM provides beautiful anti-aliased fonts as a default, which is
the way it should be. On other platforms, such as Windows, most user applications
like browsers, email are also anti-aliased as a default. It's fair to ask the question,
why should my IDE be any different?

Unfortunately as mentioned by comments above, Java has, in the past, not made this easy.
Sun Java Studio Creator actually provides out of the box anti-aliased fonts
in the Navigation window, but it's hard coded work to make this happen.
Eclipse gets this thru SWT, but Netbeans folks reasonably opted to have this implemented
in a pure Java way and the Mustang JDK's finally help make this happen.

Tor Norbye has a blog about Netbeans and Mustang with anti-aliased fonts
on his new Solaris box. Take a look.

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tor?entry=new_toys_hot_workstation_and

What I would expect would be for the IDE to make a reasonable default based on
OS/hardware/JDK and have anti-aliased fonts as the default when reasonable.

Thanks again for publishing your thoughts,
Steve Fleming
Sun Microsystems, Java Studio Creator team

Posted by: ssffleming on April 01, 2006 at 11:17 AM

Think people are talking about two different issues here. "Tools->Option->Advanced Options->Editing->Edtior Settings->Text Antialiasing" does indeed work (at least for me using Ubuntu) for making the fonts in the CODE window readable.

The problem is the wonky GUI fonts (menus, toolbars, dialog boxes) which are jagged, ugly and hard to read. This is of course an issue with Swing, and the philosophy that no matter what OS you have chosen because of its features, we will not let you get access to those features.

Posted by: wuenlee on August 03, 2007 at 02:49 AM

Auto-complete is a matter,that's why I still using eclipse but not Netbeans.Hoping Netbeans will be better in next version:)

Posted by: holyice on April 21, 2008 at 08:03 PM

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