The NetBeans Monthly Newsletter - May 2003

http://www.netbeans.org/community/news/newsletter/

http://www.netbeans.org/
http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/ide/next.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

nbdev

[PROPOSAL] Registry API - new settings API for NetBeans
26

getting rid of the Editing workspace
17

debuggers and classpaths
16

nbusers

JGoodies Plastic L&F
20

NetBeans hangs up under Windows XP Professional
18

Most Active Posters

Jesse Glick
178

Martin, Daniel A
38

Marek Slama
37

Radim Kubacki
36

Thomas Kellerer
36

Statistics : April

IDE downloads

Total: 754463; +28500

Platform downloads

Total: 37846; +2951

Subscribers

2456; +71

Messages Posted

1714

http://www.netbeans.org/community/news/newsletter/sprout/2003-05-15_fr.html http://www.netbeans.org/communit/news/newsletter/sprout/2003-05-15_ru.html Issue 11

Sprout, Issue 11 (April 2003)

Welcome to the eleventh issue of Sprout, the NetBeans monthly newsletter.

Vote for NetBeans as your favorite IDE and the five other categories we are nominated for in the 2003 JDJ Readers' Choice Awards.

In the month of April NetBeans IDE 3.5 Beta was made available and the response was of a positive improvements made to the IDE. At this time Release Candidate 1 is ready for download . Give it a test spin and your feedback is always welcome.

On April 22, 23 and 24 the Prague office held the first NetBeans usability test outside the U.S. Be sure to read the entire article after reading the summary in Sprout.

The NetBeans Board Elections are in progress and it is not too late to nominate the people of your choice. Read below how to take part and review the polling schedule.

JavaONE is quickly approaching and there are three confirmed NetBeans related events. There will certainly be more added to this list so bookmark NetBeans JavaONE informational page.

If you have a module in the NetBeans module catalogue then you will want to update your listing by letting us know if your module is compatible with the NetBeans IDE 3.5.

Two members of the Sprout team were nominated for the NetBeans governance board; Maxym Mykhalchuk and Vincent Brabant, who work on Sprout translations in addition to their other work for NetBeans. Great job guys, keep up the excellent effort.

This month we performed a profile on NaturalLogic. Find out why NetBeans was selected for the NaturalLogic JHDL development environment.

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

Robert Demmer

NetBeans Board Elections

It is time again to choose the new members of the NetBeans Governance Board . We have an active community of people working hard to ensure NetBeans is the best it and be so take please take the time to submit your nominations for members you feel would do a good job and have earned this honor. If you need details of the election process or would like instructions on how to submit your nomination please visit our Election Process page .

The nominations & voting schedule is as follows:

- April 30 - May 14: Two-week nomination period

- May 15 - May 29: Two-week official polling period

- May 30 - New Board to be announced to community

You will find all of the current news surrounding the elections, current nominations and the future polling URL, right here .

What are you waiting for? Send your nominations and be sure to come back and vote!

[current results ]

NetBeans at JavaOne 2003

This year's JavaOne will take place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California between June 10 and 13, 2003. Below are events that are confirmed by both date and location. As more BOFs and Sessions are added our JavaOne 2003 page will be updated with the new information. We are looking forward to the events to come and so should you. Come and support NetBeans!

Building Performance Swing Applications BOF-1826

Date & Time: Wednesday June 11, 9:30 PM - 10:20 PM

Location: Track Room 120 - Moscone Center

Speaker: Petr Nejedly and Trung Duc Tran

Description: Join members of the NetBeans/Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Studio performance team to discuss tips and tricks to building responsive, performant GUI applications in Java technology, and learn techniques used by that team over the last six months to improve the performance of the NetBeans IDE.

Grid Computing using Java Technology, Jini Network Technology, and Web Services TS-1759

Date & Time: Wednesday June 11, 5:15 PM - 6:15 PM

Location: Moscone Center - Esplanade 306

Speaker: Steven Newhouse

Description: In this session, we discuss the implementation and deployment of this infrastructure into a mixed Solaris/Linux environment and its integration with Sun-related products (Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE), Sun ONE Grid Engine software, and the NetBeans software application framework) to build a Computational Grid within Imperial College.

Writing Extensions for the NetBeans Software IDE BOF-2724

Date & Time: Thursday June 12, 7:30 PM - 8:20 PM

Location: City - Argent Hotel

Speaker: Jesse Glick

Description: The extensibility of the NetBeans and Java technology software IDE makes it a popular choice for people wishing to integrate development tools into a complete GUI environment. It is open-source and has a rich set of extension APIs that make this possible. New tools and abilities can be added on the fly using prepackaged modules. The SunTM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Studio IDE, built on top of NetBeans software, uses the same APIs.

[NetBeans JavaOne informational page ]

Module Catalogue

NetBeans 3.5 Release Candidate 1 RC1 is now available and the full release is just around the corner. If you wish to
have your product listed as 3.5 compatible please perform the necessary testing and send an email to [email protected] so we can update your listing(s).

Recent Addition & Categorical Listing:

- Kodo JDO - Database, Kodo JDO is SolarMetric's robust, high-performing, feature-rich implementation of the Java Data Objects specification for object persistence.

[module catalogue ]

Usability Study in Prague

At NetBeans, easy-to-use applications don't just happen. Instead, from the very beginning, usability research goes hand in hand with the development cycle and focuses on the application's potential users.

Members of the User Centered Software Design group in Prague, headed by manager Dirk Ruiz in California, work to bring together interface and interaction design expertise, customer feedback and user research to directly improve the quality and usability of NetBeans.

On April 22, 23 and 24 the Prague office held the first NetBeans usability test outside the U.S. . A team of four designers (Chris Le Dantec, Jiri Mzourek, Jano Rojcek, and Gabo Tichy) had begun testing NetBeans to provide first hand user data to analyze and improve upon the usability in NetBeans. The test involved five participants and the testing lab was complete with audio and video-recording equipment as well as a screen capture tool.

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"Conducting a usability test provides several benefits. First and foremost, the data gathered is invaluable in developing an understanding how users approach the software and typical tasks during its use - this turns into an abstract user model that will be used as a guidepost during design. Additionally, specific design decisions are tested. More intangibly, holding a test gives developers and managers a chance to watch real people use the software. There is nothing more eye opening than watching a person struggle with something assumed to be easy and nothing more satisfying than witnessing an effecient relationship between the user and the software." - Chris Le Dantec
----------

With the analyzed data the designers will work with the development team to iterate the design and fix or improve the areas that were documented to be problematic. The refreshed design covered in the UI Specification will then be used to iterate the code and the process starts over again with continued testing, analysis and itteration. Each time focusing on different functional areas of the IDE.

[complete article ]

In The Press

Selected articles where NetBeans had appeared in the month of April.

SolarMetric to Provide JDO Support for Sun ONE Studio/NetBeans Developers - SolarMetric announced it will partner with Sun Microsystems to provide Java Data Object (JDO) support for Sun/NetBeans users. SolarMetric's popular Kodo JDO product, which reduces the time and effort associated with linking databases with a Java application, is now available as a plug-in to the Sun ONE Studio/NetBeans development environment.

Teamstudio Analyzer for Java Edition 2 - Teamstudio Analyzer for Java Edition 2.0 evaluates a Java project's code, creating error conditions linked to specific pieces of code. Edition 2.0 includes more than 50 rules to check compliance with EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) specifications; custom rules; and supports for NetBeans.

[complete news ]

NaturalLogic and NetBeans

NaturalLogic is an FPGA CAD tool that integrates JHDL (Java Hardware Description Language) with NetBeans. NaturalLogic provides an Integrated Development Environment for creating and testing JHDL digital logic circuits.

JHDL is a Java based Hardware Description Language created at the Configurable Computing Laboratory of Brigham Young University. It is used to define the components and connections of a digital logic circuit. With JHDL you create a circuit structure using Java object classes.

Object classes are provided for basic logic operations and circuit components that can be mapped to a number of popular FPGA technologies. In addition, technology specific objects are available such as the Xilinx Virtex optimized array multiplier. You can also use JHDL to create your own objects by extending existing JHDL classes.

JHDL eliminates the need for a "domain specific" programming language and development environment such as VHDL. It's easy to learn, integrates seamlessly with host Java software and takes advantage of Java's object oriented design abstraction/encapsulation/inheritance features.

NetBeans was selected for the NaturalLogic JHDL development environment. The decision to use NetBeans was based on a number of considerations.

NetBeans is open-source and free. Since developers have access to all open-source project source code they can feel confident that no development problems will turn into show stoppers. Unlike commercial IDEs, you do not not have a recurring cost to pass on to your customers.

[continue to full article ]