The NetBeans open source project is proud to announce the early access release of the NetBeans IDE 4.1 as the project delivers significant new development capabilities for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.4 (J2EE) including Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) components and Web Services.
For downloads of this release go to:
For the quick start guide, see:
This early access release has over 15 new modules for developing J2EE 1.4 applications and is built on the novel and breakthrough NetBeans 4.0 technology. Users can develop programs for Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME), and now J2EE EJBs and Web Services. Using the free SunTM Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8.1 beta as the deployment runtime and with NetBeans guiding the developer and automatically building the underlying J2EE infrastructure, learning about and developing J2EE 1.4 applications has never been easier. To further assist the developer, there are numerous samples of J2EE applications easily accessible from within the IDE, as well contributions from the J2EE Java BluePrints catalog.
With a pure Java technology integrated development environment and cross platform availability for Windows, Linux and the Solaris Operating System, this is the best time to get a look at the future.
The next early access release is planned for January 2005.
You can find more information on the key upcoming features by visiting the NetBeans 4.1 Early Access announcement or stop by the NetBeans 4.1 release information page.
Additional information can also be found at http://j2ee.netbeans.org/, the home page for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Support modules in NetBeans IDE.
i’m gonna get it right now
Good SpringLayout support in the GUI form designer (ala BeanBuilder), I don’t know why it has taken some much time to add this to NetBeans. Having to deal with GridBagLayout when modifying a form is a real pain (the support for GridBag is good, but still …).
They keep adding support for J2EE to the IDE, but the J2SE visual support seems stagnant. When this Layout was first introduced, they said it was made just for GUI editors, but so far no mainstream java IDE offers any support for it. Why is that so?
I just tried netbeans the other day, it’s not half-bad, but I found that the Eclipse Visual Editor was much friendlier and sophisticated.
If netbeans would “pretty-up” a bit and perhaps get a little more optimization work done to it, I might give it another whirl.
See, I wish that Eclipse would optimize and “pretty-up”. I like the look and feel of NetBeans much better. And with LARGE enterprise projects, it is much more responsive than Eclipse.
-G
From the webpage:
“Please note that this is an early access release of NetBeans IDE 4.1. NetBeans IDE 4.0 is the upcoming release which is currently in the Beta 2 stage and scheduled for a December 2004 release.”
Don’t you think that it’s a bit idiotic to use 4.1 as a number when 4.0’s final version of THE SAME PRODUCT is not out yet?
I don’t think this has anything to do with PR… check out the release roadmap
http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/roadmap.html
NetBeans 4.1 is scheduled to be released only 4 months later than 4.0. I think the PreView is just a great example of open-source transparency. NetBeans is one of the most interesting technologies around and the developers give you unfettered access to what they have planned for the future.
The projects aren’t compatible between Netbeans 4.0b2 and Netbeans 4.1. These are two different branches and they haven’t indicated any merge point.
Concerning eclipse… in this thread it’s probably better to compare the J2EE features in Netbeans 4.1 to Eclipse + whatever plugins, not the visual editor.
I’ve used SunOne with J2EE support and Netbeans 4.1 is basically a branch of Netbeans 4.0 with most of the modules from SunOne. The J2EE support was pretty good (only for Sun’s app server). Netbeans 4.1 aims to support Tomcat next and then as many other servers as possible. When writing J2EE ‘apps’ I usually avoid using IDE’s that support it directly because IDE’s usually have their own way of doing things. Netbeans itself is flexible enough to work with any project structure but I’m not so sure about how flexible this ‘new’ J2EE support is.
I was wondering if NetBeans was pure Java or was it in anyway dependent on com.sun.* packages? It’s the level of information in the debugger that makes me think that they are somehow hooking into the JVM itself? Anyone run it on an IBM JVM or Apple’s or etc?
After several years of abstinence, I gave Netbeans recently a try again and was pleasantly surprised, it has become fast and very easy to use. One gripe however still is the gui builder, the currently best layout manager the form layout by karsten lentzsch is not supported by any ide. Would have been great for netbeans to integrate that, but having spring layout at least helps somewhat, althoug spring layout is not as good as form layout.
Jason is right. The version numbering has nothing to do with PR. NetBeans uses the “train release model”, which means work on several releases are being done at the same time but they are at different stages.
Thank you. Just checked a few scarce bits about the train release model on the net. Just as the train, the release date is set (ideally) in stone from the start.
This should not be the beginning of YAF (yet another flamewar), but I think NB is better because:
1) it is faster and more light-weight to use than eclipse (if light-weight can be used about a heavy application.
2) it has (nb4.0b2) full support for Java 1.5 (5.0) – eclipse lacks this (3.1M2 also lacks it)