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 Vincent Brabant's BlogDecember 2003 ArchivesWill the future release 3.6 permit to NetBeans to stay in the race or is it too late ?Posted by vbrabant on December 12, 2003 at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)NetBeans team announced some weeks ago the near future of NetBeans. Already last month it was possible to test the new window systems integrated in the trunk release.
Very nice result. You can
A lot of nice and very useful enhancements have been done. But I would like to know if it's too late for netBeans or not. I can affirm that it existed before Eclipse and that it exists after Eclipse. Now, the competition is harder than before. Users can choose between good, open source IDEs, even pay a little to have IDE like IDEALJ. NetBeans must reply to attacks from Eclipse to survive. Recently, announcement was done that NetBeans is delivered with a new window system. And I think personally, that it's a success. NetBeans seems now to be faster than before, not as ugly than before, even with the Metal Look & Feel. But I had a question in my head: Is it too late ? I think that no. It's not too late. NetBeans is really a good product and has nice features that others don't yet have. Just some details that make the difference. That's why we continue to use it. The major problem, is that you need to know keyboard shortcuts to use those functions. Some very nice functions are only available via keyboard shortcuts, but never by mouse or in the menus. How many people, when using a graphical IDE, are reading the keyboard shortcuts help section to know the features integrated in a product ? Not so many. And that's why NetBeans can be seen as a poor IDE. But, if you take time to learn it, you will discover all advantages of thoses features. The big problem with NetBeans is the noise. Nobody speak about NetBeans. But everyone talks about Eclipse. At Javapolis, there were stands of Sun, Novell, Compuware, Bea, TeamStudio, hp. Sun was promoting the Java Desktop, Novell was promoting the exteNd Compuware was promoting their MDA Driven IDE, OptimalJ. Bea was promoting weblogic, TeamStudio was promoting his Java suite But, do you know that all those companies develop products on top of the NetBeans platform or modules for NetBeans, and I am pretty sure that few of you knew it.
And a lot of other companies are using netbeans modules, like the MDR module, used by a UML tool And not one of those four companies, even Sun, at their stand, did even a little advertizing for NetBeans. Totally Incredible. But do you know how exactly powerful is NetBeans ? just look at the photoalbum demo to discover it then. Also don't forget that behind the name NetBeans, you have two products: the platform and the IDE.
So when I see the pre-alpha release of NetBeans 3.6, and when I see the features that NB4.0 will have. I am confident that NetBeans is always in the race to be one of the best Java IDEs, if not the best one. So, please, take time to look at the future NB3.6 release. Look at the new features. Try it by yourself !!!
I saw the new Java Studio Creator in action (codename: Rave) at BEJUGPosted by vbrabant on December 04, 2003 at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)Today, like yesterday, I had the possibility to follow somes conference at Javapolis, organized by the Belgian Java User Group BEJUG. I missed the one concerning OptimalJ (based upon netBeans) of Compuware, because it was at the same moment of the conference concerning JSF, presented by Craig R. McClanahan. But At the end of this afternoon, I followed the conference given by Robert Brewin, the Architecht for the Corporate Developer tools organization, at Sun, concerning the project Rave. Robert begins by explaining that people needed a visual tool, where you can build your application visually, but where you can also modify the source code freely, if you want. He explained that people want to be able to develop application that are not vendor dependent, but that are based upon (future) java standards, like JSP, JSF, ROWSETS, ... and can be deployed easily on any server. He introduced the planning of Rave, by saying that Rave 1.0 would permits visual development of JSP/JSF applications. He also said that Rave 2.0 will permits visual development of rich (Swing) client applications. He demonstrates how to visually build a little web application having two JSP pages, with somes elements therein (a listbox and a table on the first page, a table on the second page). It was amazing: You drop a JSF Table element in the JSP page. Then you drop the table of your database in that JSF Table element and it customize automaticaly the rows with data format of your database table. Then, you can click on the table, and construct visually your select, (like within MS ACCESS) and saying which column must be displayed. The table displayed in your JSP is then updated to display only selected column. You have also the possibility to build visually the workflow of your application. You see then little representation of your jsp page with clickable elements. When I click on the button, I can then link it to an empty place, outside of the jsp page, and automatically, it created a second JPS page and then he could give a name to the link, ... p>You have the notion of palettes, where you can pick amongs JSF composants, ... Also amongs little piece of code, contained in the palette of clips. Just Drag and drop from youe editor to add the selected code into clips paletter, to be able to copy it later in another editor. It was running like a charme. You really had no impression that it was an heavy application, at any moment Somes people in the audience really enjoyed this demo. And I was happy to constat it because I knowed that it was builded upon the netbeans platform. But (there is always a BUT), I was also very surprised with the followings :
The two first constatations lets me perplex, because, if you read newsgroup of NetBeans, you really have impression that it has been developped from scratch by netBeans developpers, and never I read that it was Rave code given back to the netBeans community. At the end of the presentation, we had possibilities to ask questions: someone starter by asking if Rave was based upon Eclipse or NetBeans. And when Robert said that it was builded upon NetBeans, it was really like he was a liar. Nobody trusted him. That application, that seems so nice, so beautifull, so well-responding can't be based upon the ugly, and slowly appication that is NetBeans. That is impossible. It shows that Sun AND the netBeans community must do effort to fight against the problem of allergy that java developers encounter when they ear about NetBeans. Another guy also aked him then, if it was a swing application. And when Robert said that yes, a new astonishment occurs in the audience. Can a Swing application be nice ? It really seems that everyone in the audience was disappointed that it was not based upon eclipse. During the demo, the excitation of audience was growing, and it dropped rapidly when Robert said that it bas based upon NetBeans. Then someone asked for the price. After a (long) moment of hesitation, Robert speaked about the price of MS Products and finally said that price of Rave would be lower than 400$,. After the presentation, I had the occasion to speak with him. And I asked if the netBeans Community will have back developments done in the rave application. He said that every enhancements/modifications of the netbeans IDE code will be given back to the netbeans community, because they are obliged to do that to respect the Sun Public Licence. But ONLY enhancements, NOT new features, like the visual jsp editor. By saying that they were obliged to give it back to the netbeans community, Robert seems very annoyed like if he prefered that Rave product stay a closed source product. I also asked if Rave 2.0 will use the form editor of netbeans, but he said no. The Form editor is too limited for what they want to do for Rave 2.0. Will Rave 2.0 have a two way editor ? Will it be given back to the netbeans community ?We have to wait until next year to know what it will happens.
My Conclusion Rave (Sun Java Studio Creator) seems to be a very good product. I can only congratulates Rave Developers team (it seems it's not the same as the netbeans one) for the nice product they produce. But a demo is always just a demo. So wait and see. But, now the java product line of Sun is really not clear. Sun handle three products based upon the netbeans plaform :
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