The NetBeans Monthly Newsletter - March 2003

http://www.netbeans.org/
http://www.netbeans.org/ide/download.html

Check this out

Module Catalogue

Catalogue of free and commercial add-on modules available for your NetBeans
IDE.

NetBeans 3.4.1
available for download.

OnJava NB Article

NetBeans article from OnJava

Sun ONE Studio Portal

NetBeans related resources

Hot threads

nbusers

Netbeans performance
28

Close window
22

Netbeans look and feel is extremely inferior !!!!
21

nbdev

[ANN] FastJavac support is discontinued
22

nbdiscuss

localised language mailing lists on netbeans.org
21

Most Active Posters

Jesse Glick
179

CL Gilbert
53

Marek Slama
47

Jaroslav Tulach
41

Tim Boudreau
37

Statistics : February

IDE downloads

Total: 681839; +27887

Platform downloads

Total: 30139; +2750

Subscribers

2359; +75

Messages Posted

1847

http://www.netbeans.org/newsletter/sprout/2003-03-05.html Issue 9

Sprout, Issue 9 (February 2003)

Welcome to the ninth issue of Sprout, the NetBeans monthly news.

In this issue we explore the international phenomenon known as NetBeans and the constellation of events that orbit its sphere of influence.

It's Tegal before Yogya and you better put your seat belt on because Trung is the conductor of the train for NetBeans 3.5. We hope to catch-up with Trung to give him a speeding ticket as the driver of Tegal and to get an explanation of this revved up effort. Watch for Sprout 10.

There are two new mailing list for the NetBeans community to take part in, [email protected] for communication in Russian and [email protected] for communication in French. They are available for those people who cannot communicate in the English language and for those people who wish to support this effort.

A glimpse of the future in a package you love to unwrap. Yes, it must be the www.NetBeans.org redesign efforts unfolding before your eyes. Check out an early screenshot . This is not the final version.

Phil DeJarnett recently contributed a nice
how-to detailing how to get started in the development of J2EE apps with NetBeans and other open-source tools. Great job Phil.

Get the scoop in part one of a two part series with the engineers from Novell and learn how they leveraged NetBeans to accomplish their goals.

The module catalogue has two additions, one update and a few shuffles in place for the preparation of NetBeans 3.5 Tegal.

In the Developer Spotlight we speak with Tim Boudreau; programmer, musician, photographer.

Where has NetBeans appeared in the the press this month? In an interview with Jonathan Schwartz from Sun Microsystems, NetBeans is mentioned but as an entire interview it is worth the read.

What information would you like to see NetBeans marketing produce? Let's get interactive; surveys, polls, data collection, link promotion, you name it. Shoot us some ideas and be sure to send your replies to March's question. See Community Corner below.

If you have compliments or complaints, suggestions or comments you can always give us a Shout at Sprout .

Robert Demmer

Code-name Tegal

NetBeans 3.5, code-name Tegal has been approved by the community. Tegal's primary focus will be performance and it's expected release date will be June 2003.

If you are not aware of this decision you may want to view the original Tegal proposal as sent by Trung, who has since been elected Release Coordinator.

The following modules will be included in the standard distribution for the Tegal release and beyond. They are targeted to support data-centric Java Web development, deployment and debugging.

- Database Explorer (db.jar)

- JSP Debugger (jspdebug.jar)

- Web Apps-Advanced module (jspie.jar)

- HTTP Monitor (monitor.jar)

- Tag Library Editor (taglibed.jar)

Please note that they have been available on the Update Center since the NetBeans 3.4 release as stable modules.

What's the current buzz around Tegal?

In fact, I'm really impressed with how much response time has improved in the 3.5 dev builds. - John Richardson

... I can say, that NetBeans is running amazingly smooth, there is some definite improvements in performance. I am indeed looking forward to 3.5. And I've had no hangs or pauses. I highly appreciate the "initialising..." workspaces to distinguish lazy initialisation, and despite a alternative opinion on the use of the wait-cursor I've converted and am now a believer. - Mick Wever

NetBeans 4.0 (Yogyakarta or Yogya for short) with Projects support is postponed and will come out later this year, some time in November. The extended schedule for NetBeans 4.0 allows everyone in the community to suggest new product contents and/or make additional contributions into the release.

[Tegal planning ]

Community Corner

The Community Corner is a new addition to Sprout where we will pose a question to the community, process the information and present the findings back to you. As always you are encouraged to submit questions for the upcoming issues of Sprout.

March's question:

Where do you get your development and technical news on the Internet? - I get my news from...

Do you read Slashdot, CNET and so on? List as many as like including non-English websites and other resources that you may use. The NetBeans marketing team will collect this information and use the data received for further promotion efforts.

Our findings will be posted in the next issue of Sprout and also on the marketing pages.

February's Move the Needle winner is:

-
RockyRoad/JRRA

Hits : 237

URL : http://www.ua.jrra.org

[move the needle results ]

Module Catalogue

Recent Additions & Categorical Listings:

- Etnus CodeRoad JNI Bridge - Debugging

- PMD new version 0.7 - Java Development

- SQL ToolBox - Database

[complete module catalogue ]

NetBeans Factoids

If you would like to contribute but not sure how to get started, NB marketing is the place. It is an open mailing list when we explore the paths to further our community.

Website Traffic

- 370,000 downloads of the NetBeans IDE in 2002

- 25,500 downloads of the NetBeans Platform in 2002

- 14,440 registered users, 4943 have joined since August

Mailing List

- 2360 unique subscribers on top-level mailing lists

- 1615 subscribers on [email protected]

- 60+ countries represented

- 31,353 posts to top level mailing lists (86 every day)

- Recently celebrated 100th of NetBeans weekly newsletter

Community

- 3.4.1 community release

- NetBeans.JP adopts NetBeans.org look and feel

- NB Marketing started to further NetBeans growth

- Sprout monthly newsletter is sent in 4 languages

- Move the Needle initiative is underway

- NetBeans merchandise shop is now open

Third-party

- 47 partners are listed on third-party page

- 78 modules in web catalogue of which 56 are stable

Listings

- NetBeans on Tucows.com with a five cow rating (highest)

- Download.com and CNET

This information has been produced as part of the NetBeans marketing effort.

[NetBeans marketing home ]

Developer Spotlight

Tim Boudreau has been a part of NetBeans since June 1999, nearly four years. Before joining NetBeans he was employed as a contract programmer in the United States for several years and was looking to do something a little bit different.

Tim found and advertisement on the Internet from a tiny Czech company. He had been to Prague before on a backpacking trip around Europe and liked it there. Tim thought, "It's probably a joke - I'll never hear from them" but if he did not send his resume it may have been a decision he would regret for the rest of his life. He packaged his resume with a skeptical letter that stated something like, "Here's my resume. Call me if you're interested." They did call.

Chapter Two, the utility man. Tim has worked on many things, from writing docs to supporting the marketing manager and the co-authoring the APIs part of the NetBeans book. After more than three years of no programming he missed it greatly and decided to go back. "Diving straight into being a NetBeans core developer was a little scary -- you learn how much you don't know very quickly but I'm enjoying it."

We asked Mr. Boudreau about the people he works with and to give us some information about what he enjoys about his job. "Well, I work with some great people, and I think there's a good deal of fun that goes into work on NetBeans. And there are some great intellectual challenges that come with the job - it's always interesting, sometimes because it challenges you to push your limits and learn new things, sometiems because it's like playing detective (tracking down and fixing bugs)."

In his spare time this "detective" is a singer-songwriter and in the early 90's spent a year playing professionally, mostly acoustic guitar and vocals. This jack of all trades also digs black and white photography, occassionally turning his bathroom into a darkroom and spending a day printing pictures.

[listen to tim's tunes ]

A Novel(l) Approach

Novell exteNd has leveraged NetBeans to build an extensible IDE for use with J2EE application development. NetBeans was chosen from a narrowed field that included Eclipse and a custom solution for their Java software development.

What is exteNd? - Novell exteNd is a suite of business solutions, products, and consulting services that gives you the power to unify your Web services technology environment and the freedom to create more effective business solutions for your customers, partners, and employees. And Novell exteNd makes the process of developing Web-based applications fast, simple, and cost-effective.

Why Novell choose NetBeans - "NetBeans provided us an extensible editor in "pure" Java. The primary feature we were interested in was the Java and JSP code completion and NetBeans nicely provided those facilities." Enough said.

----------
The exteNd Engineering Team:

Rick Noel - Sr. Development Mgr

Zack Grossbart - Principal Software Engineer

Helen Herold - Principal Software Engineer

Douglas Knowles - Principal Software Engineer

Alexander Rosen - Principal Software Engineer

Michael Stapp - Principal Software Engineer

Armen Suri - Senior Software Engineer

Laura Wollstadt - Senior Software Engineer
----------

Challenges - "We needed to use some of the portions of the NetBeans core outside of the NetBeans framework and sometimes it was to separate portions of the IDE for use outside of the framework."

Use of the code - "It would be nice if the module were more separate and depended less on the core."

Best Attributes of NetBeans - "Extensibility, maintainability, and open source."

The Novell engineers first learnt of NetBeans through a colleague and have been using NetBeans for 18 months running. In their words, "NetBeans is pretty good and [has] very stable architecture. We would recommend that anyone give it a try."

This is part one of a two part series. Stay tuned for a more in depth perspective of Novells' experience with NetBeans and the technological details behind the curtain.

[Novell exteNd ]

In The Press

Static Analysis with PMD - PMD is a utility for finding problems in Java code. PMD does this using static analysis; that is, analyzing the source code without actually running the program. PMD was also featured in Sprout 7 and an interview with Tom and Ole-Martin by Vincent Brabant.

Have you seen NetBeans related information in the press? Let us know .

Sun's Schwartz: 'We're Back in Force' - "We drive a very large open-source effort, NetBeans, to deliver the world's best GUI tools to Java developers around the planet." This is NetBeans mention but click to read the full interview with eWeek.

Building a sample Web App with STRUTS - In this article, I will discuss building a sample web application using STRUTS. STRUTS is a leading open-source Web Application Framework. NetBeans is the leading open-source IDE and we will use it to demonstrate how to simplify application development using the IDE. Finally our application will run on TomCat application server.

Integrating Jtagmanager with Sun ONE Studio - Taking full advantage of the NetBeans infrastructure (used by Sun[tm] ONE Studio), they were subsequently enabled to create a plug-in module that has a much smaller footprint and is significantly easier to maintain.

MagicDraw UML 6.0 released - Good news for NetBeans users, integrate it with MagicDraw UML 6.0 and use two products in more effective way.

Web Seminar given by Intland Software - Distributed Team Development using NetBeans, and more.

[news page ]