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| <h1>NetBeans Takes The Gold</h1> |
| |
| <p> |
| <i>“NetBeans wins over Eclipse this year, because NetBeans has made significant progress and |
| growth relative to Eclipse.”</i> —O’Reilly OnJava.com |
| <p> |
| <i>“The good news begins with the NetBeans Welcome screen, where the ever-tighter connection of |
| developers to their tool community is evidenced by the inclusion of blogs as well as community |
| news.”</i> —eweek |
| <br><p> |
| <h4><p> |
| When NetBeans recently nabbed the 2007 InfoWorld Award for Java IDE Innovator, the award was |
| another highlight in a season of good press. But the IDE’s acclaim did not happen overnight; the |
| momentum had been building since the release of NetBeans 4.0 in December 2004. It continued through |
| the releases of NetBeans 4.1 and 5.0, and with the October 2006 release of NetBeans 5.5 there was no |
| denying the IDE's explosive growth and adoption rate. |
| <p> |
| The NetBeans IDE has gained industry-wide recognition for its portability, ease-of-use, |
| and—with the release of the 5.5 version and its add-on packs—improved productivity. For Jan Chalupa, |
| NetBeans’s Director of Engineering, and his team, the positive feedback has not gone unnoticed. |
| <p> |
| “It's definitely encouraging and satisfying to see that the hard work we invested into improving |
| NetBeans since the 4.0 release is paying off. We were not only able to fix the performance and usability |
| problems the older versions of NetBeans suffered from, but we also kept up with the latest technologies, |
| and added unique and innovative features.” |
| <p> |
| The revamp has earned NetBeans an impressive roster of |
| <a href="https://netbeans.org/about/press/awards.html">awards</a> and positive |
| <a href="https://netbeans.org/about/press/reviews.html">reviews</a> from print and online magazines. |
| Likewise, the response from users has been favorable—downloads on the NetBeans site |
| hit the 12-milion mark in December 2006. |
| <p> |
| According to NetBeans’s Director of Evangelism Judith Lilienfeld, the recent accolades and statistics |
| are a great validation and recognition of the hard work done by engineers and evangelists, and the |
| resulting disruption that NetBeans has created in the market. She spoke recently about NetBeans’s |
| previous challenges, its new favored status, and what lies ahead in 2007. |
| </h4> |
| <br> |
| <table align="left" width="360"><tr><td> |
| <img src="../../images_www/articles/infoworld_small.jpg" alt="NetBeans has won the |
| InfoWorld Innovator Award." |
| width="327" align="left" hspace="8" vspace="2"><br>InfoWorld |
| Innovator Award 2007.<br><br></td></tr></table> |
| <h3>NetBeans has just won two technology awards from O'Reilly's OnJava.com, the |
| Infoworld Innovator Award and received numerous positive reviews for the |
| NetBeans 5.5 release. To what do you attribute the turnaround?</h3> |
| <p> |
| Yes—quite a nice way to celebrate the new year. If you read through the reviews |
| and awards, you will notice some things mentioned again and again: ease of use, a |
| short learning curve, and the increased developer productivity. Also, let's not |
| forget that the NetBeans IDE runs—without any changes—on all the different |
| operating systems. This portability is a key value proposition for Java as well as |
| the NetBeans IDE and Platform.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What is the NetBeans Platform? </h3> |
| <p> |
| NetBeans is both an IDE and a Rich Client Platform (RCP). A Rich Client |
| Platform is just a fancy name for the minimal NetBeans functionality that |
| is needed to build a rich client application. Anything built on top of the |
| NetBeans Platform can be called a Rich Client Platform application. There |
| are people all around the world building RCPs on the NetBeans Platform—one |
| of those applications is the award-winning NetBeans IDE. It used to be that |
| building NetBeans RCP applications was a bit cumbersome, but that changed in |
| February 2006 with the release of NetBeans IDE 5.0 when we added features |
| that dramatically accelerate the creation of NetBeans RCP applications. The |
| industry and community took notice, so look for some announcements later this |
| year about NetBeans RCP applications. <br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>NetBeans was around before Eclipse, why did industry recognition |
| take so long? </h3> |
| <p> |
| It boils down to three simple reasons. First, several years ago we had some |
| performance and usability problems. Second, at that same time we had a somewhat |
| confusing message: there were too many different developer tools based on NetBeans |
| and it was hard to figure out which to use. Third, while all that was happening IBM |
| launched the Eclipse phenomenon with major marketing dollars. When I joined the team |
| a little over two years ago we released NetBeans 4.0 and we could not get any industry |
| publications to cover the release. But things have obviously changed. So if you haven't |
| looked at NetBeans in a while, you need to take a new look. Check out some of the stories |
| of developers who <a href="https://netbeans.org/switch/realstories.html">switched |
| from Eclipse to NetBeans</a>.<br> |
| <br> |
| <table align="left" width="360"><tr><td> |
| <img src="../../images_www/articles/evangelism-team.jpg" alt="Judith |
| and the Evangelism Team Keep NetBeans Moving." |
| width="327" align="left" hspace="8" vspace="2"><br>Judith |
| and the Evangelism Team Keep NetBeans Moving.<br><br></td></tr></table> |
| <h3>What exactly does a Director of Evangelism do? </h3> |
| <br> |
| It means that I get the credit for the work of some very smart people. The evangelism team |
| has been out there pounding the pavement talking, demoing, and presenting the NetBeans IDE |
| and NetBeans Platform all over the world for the past couple of years. We have a great product |
| (which engineering has worked very hard to give us) but to get folks interested we still need |
| to get out there and talk to developers geek-to-geek. That's what the team does and they are |
| great at it.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What kind of developers should be using NetBeans? </h3> |
| <br> |
| NetBeans IDE 5.5 leads the industry in its support for Java EE 5 development. We are very proud of |
| that. We wanted to make it easier for regular people to develop Java EE applications. But, let's not |
| forget that our Java ME support is second to none. Besides Java ME and Java EE, we have the NetBeans |
| GUI Builder (formerly code named Project Matisse) for Java SE developers. And then there are all our |
| additional features: a full-fledged profiler that compares favorably to many commercial products, a |
| set of very sophisticated tools for creating BPEL processes and the required XML schemas, support for |
| C/C++ development, and our Visual Web Pack which provides visual web application development features |
| from Sun's award-winning Java Studio Creator IDE. In addition, you may have seen the announcements |
| about the Open JDK and how easily you can work with the JDK projects from within the NetBeans IDE. In |
| short, all developers should be using NetBeans.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>How do you top NetBeans's current success? </h3> |
| <br> |
| NetBeans IDE 6.0 is coming next. It is all about better scripting support and dramatic improvements to |
| the Java editor. I cannot tell you everything now, but you will see a preview of it at JavaOne 2007 and |
| at NetBeans Day (the day before JavaOne). As usual, NetBeans Day will be free, even if you are not |
| attending JavaOne. So stay tuned for more details on registration.<br> |
| <br> |
| <h3>What's the biggest event happening within the NetBeans community? </h3> |
| <br> |
| There is quite a bit going on, so it is tough to pick just one. I mentioned earlier those tools we added |
| to make it easier to build NetBeans RCP applications. Those same tools can be used to build plugin modules |
| for the NetBeans IDE, leading to a wide array of new plugins being created by the community. The other |
| "price of success" is that as great as the evangelism team is, the interest in NetBeans has grown so |
| fast we just can't handle everything on our own. The NetBeans Dream Team, made up of members of the |
| community who have been selected by the community for their outstanding contributions, will be helping |
| us spread the word.<br> |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| <h2>Recent Awards and Reviews</h2> |
| <br> |
| <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2007/01/25-2007_technology-3.html"> |
| Java IDE Innovator, InfoWorld Technology of the Year Awards</a> |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2006/12/2006_java_technology_winners_a.html"> |
| Java IDE Winner, O'Reilly's ONJava.com 2006 Java Technology Awards</a> |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://java.sys-con.com/read/260074.htm"> |
| Winner, Java Developer's Journal 2006 "JDJ Editors' Choice" Awards</a> |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://www.siia.net/codies/2006/winners.asp"> |
| Best Software Development Solution, 2006 Codie Awards</a> |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://javaboutique.internet.com/reviews/netbeans55/"> |
| NetBeans 5.5: Java IDE Comes into Its Own</a> (<i>Java Boutique</i>) |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="https://netbeans.org/community/articles/linux-format-magazine-review.html"> |
| NetBeans Scores 9/10</a> (<i>Linux Format</i>) |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://jroller.com/page/alexhall?entry=don_t_eclipse_netbeans"> |
| Don't Eclipse NetBeans</a> (<i>Jroller.com</i>) |
| <br><br> |
| <a href="http://www.theopensourcery.com/wordp1/index.php?p=525"> |
| "...one of the best IDEs available in the market."</a> (<i>Opensourcery.com</i>) |
| <br> |
| <br> |
| More <a href="https://netbeans.org/about/press/awards.html">awards</a> |
| and <a href="https://netbeans.org/about/press/reviews.html">reviews</a>. |
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