More details on the proposed NetBeans 4.0 release

Hi All,

as promised in my previous email outlining the proposed changes to the 
NetBeans 4.0 plan
(http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=619519&listName=nbdiscuss),
I would like to shed some light on what features we at Sun are going to 
work on
for this release.

As I mentioned in the previous mail, the main proposed themes for the 4.0
release are coding productivity and a new Ant-based build system and 
this is
where majority of our focus will go. Further work is also planned for Web
application support and an improvements to the out of the box experience.

The larger features that are targeted for the NetBeans 4.0 release include:
- the new build system
- refactoring
- support for J2ee 1.4 & Tomcat 5
- Jdk 1.5 support
- integrating TaskList
- outline view
- getting the IDE fully usable only with a keyboard
- multiple enhancements in the Editor focusing on productivity
- JavaHelp 2.0 based help
- external tools integration

We estimate that the 4.0 release in this form would be released in the 
Summer of
2004.

More details about each of those areas together with some sneak-peak 
screenshots
are available at the proposed new 4.0 release page:
http://www.netbeans.org/community/planning/40/proposed.html

For a discussion about the 4.0 release, please joing the nbdiscuss 
mailing list
either by e-mail (see http://www.netbeans.org/community/lists/top.html for
details) or via NNTP 
(news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.netbeans.general)

-Ian