src/content/community/articles/netbeans61.html - netbeans-website-cleanup - Git at Google

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 <head>
   <meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
   <title>NetBeans IDE 6.1 – Faster, Better, Stronger</title>
   <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../netbeans.css">
 </head>
 <body>
 <h1>NetBeans IDE 6.1 – Faster, Better, Stronger </h1>
 <br>
 NetBeans
 IDE version 6.1 has been released recently. This version comes
 relatively soon after its widely successful predecessor – NetBeans
 IDE 6.0. Although NetBeans 6.1 is not as revolutionary as 6.0 (which
 brought a completely redesigned Java editor), the new release has
 many new features. In this article we'll discuss the new features one
 by one. This article only covers the major improvements, so if you
 want to see a complete list please visit the <a
  href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy">6.1 New
 and Noteworthy
 page</a>.<br>
 <br>
 <a href="../../downloads/index.html"><img
  alt="Download the NetBeans IDE" src="../../images_www/v6/dl-nb-ide.gif"
  style="border: 0px solid ; width: 242px; height: 27px;"></a><br>
 <br>
 Let's look at what is new and improved in the new release.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>Performance and Quality</h2>
 The
 main themes of the release are performance and quality – after all, as
 a minor release it stabilizes the previous major release.
 These goals are rather intangible but developers should notice a
 faster startup (up to 40% over version 6.0 if multiple
 projects are open) and different performance boosts all across the
 board. One of the big issues in 6.0 was slow parsing of JSP files, and
 feedback from the NetBeans community indicates that version 6.1
 doesn't suffer from this problem anymore. A new incremental parser
 has been integrated into the Java editor, so all Java syntax related
 features such as code completion, navigator, refactorings, etc.
 should be noticeably faster, especially on large classes. Several I/O
 related optimizations have been used to reduce the number of disk
 accesses, improving responsiveness in many cases.<br>
 <br>
 One
 performance improvement needs closer examination – the Visual Web
 Designer received many performance-related fixes leading to lower
 memory usage. The performance team fixed several issues with memory
 leaks which may have caused the Visual Designer to grow consumption
 of memory over time. The most significant change, though, is that the
 binding attributes no longer get generated by default – which leads
 to many performance improvements because the classes generated by
 Visual Web are much smaller and do not include unnecessary
 attributes, getters and setters. However, this change may be
 surprising to some users – you need to make sure you
 generate the necessary binding attribute to have access to the
 element you want to manipulate, as seen on the screenshot:<br>
 <br>
 <img style="width: 244px; height: 227px;"
  alt="Binding Attribute in NetBeans 6.1"
  src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/binding-screenshot.png"><br
  clear="left">
 <br>
 <br>
 In
 the beginning it may be surprising that you need to add binding
 attributes for each page element you want to manipulate, but the
 performance gains are definitely worth the extra work.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>New JavaScript Editor</h2>
 <a href="https://netbeans.org/kb/60/java/javascript-screencast.html">Screencast:
 New JavaScript editor in NetBeans 6.1</a><br>
 <br>
 NetBeans 6.1 provides a brand new JavaScript editor
 based on the GSF framework (General
 Scripting Framework) which was introduced together with Ruby editor
 in 6.0. It took only a few months to provide many new JavaScript
 editing features, such as:<br>
 <br>
 <ul>
   <li> Semantic highlighting </li>
   <li> Mark occurrences </li>
   <li> Instant rename </li>
   <li> Rename refactoring </li>
   <li> Quick fixes and semantic checks </li>
   <li> Tasklist integration </li>
   <li> Code completion and type analysis </li>
   <li> JavaScript documentation in code completion </li>
   <li> Browser compatibility information in code completion </li>
   <li> Go to declaration </li>
   <li> Open JavaScript type </li>
   <li> ... and much more. </li>
 </ul>
 The
 editing experience with JavaScript in version 6.1 is similar to the
 Java and Ruby editors. Work on a JavaScript debugger is in progress
 and its first prototype should be demo-ed at NetBeans Day in San
 Francisco in May 2008.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>Window System Improvements</h2>
 NetBeans
 always had a modern and flexible window system. In version 6.1, the
 visual reactions of the IDE during drag &amp; drop have been
 significantly improved, so you can see the preview of the dragged
 window and also get visual feedback in case you try to place the
 window into a forbidden area.<br>
 <br>
 <p><a href="../../images_www/articles/nb61/dragdrop-screenshot-big.png"><img
  alt="Drag and Drop preview in NetBeans 6.1"
  src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/dragdrop-screenshot.png"
  style="border: 0px solid ; width: 275px; height: 284px;"></a><br>
 <br>
 </p>
 <h2>Sharability of Projects (aka Sharable Libraries)</h2>
 This new feature in Java, Web and all J2EE project types allows you
 to
 create projects that share definitions and libraries. That in turn
 allows you to create self-contained projects or a set of projects that
 can be built from the command line, on continuous integration servers
 and by users of other IDEs without problems. In the past, the IDE used
 absolute paths to reference the libraries. With the new
 Sharable Libraries feature, the IDE uses relative paths so you can make
 sure your projects will open easily on other computers or build
 outside of the IDE.<br>
 <br>
 <p><img style="width: 549px; height: 178px;"
  alt="Shared Libraries in NetBeans 6.1"
  src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/sharedlib-screenshot.png"><br>
 <br>
 </p>
 <h2>Plug-in Manager Improvements</h2>
 In
 the past if you had a slow connection and were downloading
 various plug-ins, the IDE would be unusable until the plug-ins were
 downloaded and installed. In version 6.1 you can run the download
 task in the background, as seen on the screenshot. The IDE also
 shows a visual indication in case new plug-ins have been discovered.<br>
 <br>
 <table style="text-align: left; width: 724px; height: 190px;" border="0"
  cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
   <tbody>
     <tr>
       <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img
  style="width: 412px; height: 178px;"
  alt="Download Plugins Bar in NetBeans 6.1"
  src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/downloadbar-screenshot.png"></td>
       <td style="vertical-align: top;"><img
  style="width: 271px; height: 146px;"
  alt="Plugin Update in NetBeans 6.1"
  src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/plugin-update-screenshot.png"><br>
       </td>
     </tr>
   </tbody>
 </table>
 <p><br>
 </p>
 <h2>Mercurial Support</h2>
 The NetBeans source code base has been moved from CVS to Mercurial,
 which
 is a distributed versioning system. This change brings many
 advantages to the NetBeans IDE, including the ability to have several
 levels of repositories, easier branching and more. For this reason,
 NetBeans 6.1 now also provides built-in Mercurial support, along with
 CVS
 and Subversion.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>Popular Features are Back</h2>
 Due
 to editor infrastructure changes some of the popular features had to
 be dropped in the 6.0 release because there was not enough time to
 rewrite them to the new infrastructure. These features have been
 added back in version 6.1:<br>
 <br>
 <ul>
   <li> JSF pages from entities wizard </li>
   <li> Java Beans support </li>
   <li> BeanInfo editor </li>
 </ul>
 <h2>Ruby Additions</h2>
 Rails 2.0 is now supported and bundled with NetBeans IDE 6.1. There
 is also a
 new platform manager for Ruby which lets you choose easily between
 native Ruby and JRuby runtimes. The Ruby editor has been integrated
 into the Task List feature, and many quick fixes have been added to
 make
 Ruby
 editing even more productive. Many other usability and productivity
 improvements have been integrated, check the <a
  href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy">New and
 Noteworthy page</a>
 for a complete list of changes.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>More Technologies Supported</h2>
 NetBeans
 6.1 added support for many additional technologies and frameworks:<br>
 <br>
 <ul>
   <li> Sailfin v1 support (SIP application server based on project
 Glassfish) </li>
   <li> WebSphere 6.0 and 6.1 supported now out of the box </li>
   <li> Spring framework now supported out of the box </li>
   <li> Groovy and Grails plug-ins now available on the update center </li>
   <li> Hibernate framework plug-in now
 available on the update center </li>
   <li> Axis2 plug-in now available on the update center </li>
   <li> PHP plug-in available in preview </li>
 </ul>
 <h2>MySQL Support</h2>
 Due to the recent acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems, the
 NetBeans IDE
 6.1 added integration with MySQL. You can start or stop the MySQL
 server right from the IDE. A default connection is generated for you,
 and you can browse database tables easily and create connections to
 these tables with one click. Getting started developing with
 the NetBeans IDE and MySQL is even easier than before.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>Mobility</h2>
 In the Java ME area, Mac OS X is now officially supported and the
 Mpower
 emulater can be easily used from the IDE. Several new SVG components
 have been added and the quality and stability of Mobility Pack has
 been enhanced as well.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>RESTful Web Services Support</h2>
 The RESTful web service support in the Netbeans IDE is based on the
 JSR
 311 standard. The IDE has a wizard to create RESTful services from
 JPA entity classes. You can also create RESTful services based on
 popular design patterns provided by the IDE. Another wizard generates
 JavaScript client stubs that invoke these services. A popular feature
 is the test client that provides an interactive way to test and view
 the result of web service invocations. RESTful web service support
 was available since NetBeans 6.0 as a plugin, now it is part of the
 Netbeans IDE 6.1 standard distribution.<br>
 <br>
 <h2>Support for Popular SaaS Services</h2>
 The Web Services node in the Services tab has been enhanced to
 support SaaS (Software as a Service) services such as services
 provided by Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and YouTube. This feature enables
 Java
 developers to easily create mashup applications using those services.
 Developers can simply drag and drop operations under those services
 into a POJO, Servlet, JSP or RESTful web service and the IDE will
 generate all the plumbing code to access those services.<br>
 <br>
 <br>
 There are many other new features I didn't discuss yet – for
 example the improved Javadoc code completion, inspect members and
 inspect hierarchy improvements, SOAP UI monitor integration, WSDL,
 XML and XSD editor enhancements and much more. Again, please visit
 the New and Noteworthy page for NetBeans 6.1 to see all the
 improvements.<br>
 <br>
 Although NetBeans 6.1 is a point release, the amount of new features
 is very impressive. It is clear that NetBeans is going to
 expand into new communities mainly because it currently provides a
 very large collection of new plug-ins for various technologies that
 were not well supported before, such as JavaScript, Groovy, PHP,
 Hibernate, Spring, Axis and others. Thanks to the performance fixes
 NetBeans will appeal to users with older computers who wouldn't
 consider NetBeans before. Again, these are exciting days for the
 NetBeans community!<br>
 <br>

 For more information about NetBeans IDE 6.1 visit:<br><br>
 NetBeans IDE 6.1 <a href="../../features/index.html">Features Pages</a><br></li>
 NetBeans IDE 6.1 <a href="../../kb/index.html">Tutorials and Documentation</a></li><br><br>
 As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback on our <a href="https://netbeans.org/community/lists/top.html">mailing lists</a> and on your <a href="http://planetnetbeans.org/">blogs</a>.
 <div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(May
 2008)</span><br>
 </div>
 </body>
 </html>
	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
	<html>
	<head>
	<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
	<title>NetBeans IDE 6.1 – Faster, Better, Stronger</title>
	<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../netbeans.css">
	</head>
	<body>
	<h1>NetBeans IDE 6.1 – Faster, Better, Stronger </h1>
	<br>
	NetBeans
	IDE version 6.1 has been released recently. This version comes
	relatively soon after its widely successful predecessor – NetBeans
	IDE 6.0. Although NetBeans 6.1 is not as revolutionary as 6.0 (which
	brought a completely redesigned Java editor), the new release has
	many new features. In this article we'll discuss the new features one
	by one. This article only covers the major improvements, so if you
	want to see a complete list please visit the <a
	href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy">6.1 New
	and Noteworthy
	page</a>.<br>
	<br>
	<a href="../../downloads/index.html"><img
	alt="Download the NetBeans IDE" src="../../images_www/v6/dl-nb-ide.gif"
	style="border: 0px solid ; width: 242px; height: 27px;"></a><br>
	<br>
	Let's look at what is new and improved in the new release.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>Performance and Quality</h2>
	The
	main themes of the release are performance and quality – after all, as
	a minor release it stabilizes the previous major release.
	These goals are rather intangible but developers should notice a
	faster startup (up to 40% over version 6.0 if multiple
	projects are open) and different performance boosts all across the
	board. One of the big issues in 6.0 was slow parsing of JSP files, and
	feedback from the NetBeans community indicates that version 6.1
	doesn't suffer from this problem anymore. A new incremental parser
	has been integrated into the Java editor, so all Java syntax related
	features such as code completion, navigator, refactorings, etc.
	should be noticeably faster, especially on large classes. Several I/O
	related optimizations have been used to reduce the number of disk
	accesses, improving responsiveness in many cases.<br>
	<br>
	One
	performance improvement needs closer examination – the Visual Web
	Designer received many performance-related fixes leading to lower
	memory usage. The performance team fixed several issues with memory
	leaks which may have caused the Visual Designer to grow consumption
	of memory over time. The most significant change, though, is that the
	binding attributes no longer get generated by default – which leads
	to many performance improvements because the classes generated by
	Visual Web are much smaller and do not include unnecessary
	attributes, getters and setters. However, this change may be
	surprising to some users – you need to make sure you
	generate the necessary binding attribute to have access to the
	element you want to manipulate, as seen on the screenshot:<br>
	<br>
	<img style="width: 244px; height: 227px;"
	alt="Binding Attribute in NetBeans 6.1"
	src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/binding-screenshot.png"><br
	clear="left">
	<br>
	<br>
	In
	the beginning it may be surprising that you need to add binding
	attributes for each page element you want to manipulate, but the
	performance gains are definitely worth the extra work.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>New JavaScript Editor</h2>
	<a href="https://netbeans.org/kb/60/java/javascript-screencast.html">Screencast:
	New JavaScript editor in NetBeans 6.1</a><br>
	<br>
	NetBeans 6.1 provides a brand new JavaScript editor
	based on the GSF framework (General
	Scripting Framework) which was introduced together with Ruby editor
	in 6.0. It took only a few months to provide many new JavaScript
	editing features, such as:<br>
	<br>
	<ul>
	<li> Semantic highlighting </li>
	<li> Mark occurrences </li>
	<li> Instant rename </li>
	<li> Rename refactoring </li>
	<li> Quick fixes and semantic checks </li>
	<li> Tasklist integration </li>
	<li> Code completion and type analysis </li>
	<li> JavaScript documentation in code completion </li>
	<li> Browser compatibility information in code completion </li>
	<li> Go to declaration </li>
	<li> Open JavaScript type </li>
	<li> ... and much more. </li>
	</ul>
	The
	editing experience with JavaScript in version 6.1 is similar to the
	Java and Ruby editors. Work on a JavaScript debugger is in progress
	and its first prototype should be demo-ed at NetBeans Day in San
	Francisco in May 2008.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>Window System Improvements</h2>
	NetBeans
	always had a modern and flexible window system. In version 6.1, the
	visual reactions of the IDE during drag & drop have been
	significantly improved, so you can see the preview of the dragged
	window and also get visual feedback in case you try to place the
	window into a forbidden area.<br>
	<br>
	<p><a href="../../images_www/articles/nb61/dragdrop-screenshot-big.png"><img
	alt="Drag and Drop preview in NetBeans 6.1"
	src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/dragdrop-screenshot.png"
	style="border: 0px solid ; width: 275px; height: 284px;"></a><br>
	<br>
	</p>
	<h2>Sharability of Projects (aka Sharable Libraries)</h2>
	This new feature in Java, Web and all J2EE project types allows you
	to
	create projects that share definitions and libraries. That in turn
	allows you to create self-contained projects or a set of projects that
	can be built from the command line, on continuous integration servers
	and by users of other IDEs without problems. In the past, the IDE used
	absolute paths to reference the libraries. With the new
	Sharable Libraries feature, the IDE uses relative paths so you can make
	sure your projects will open easily on other computers or build
	outside of the IDE.<br>
	<br>
	<p><img style="width: 549px; height: 178px;"
	alt="Shared Libraries in NetBeans 6.1"
	src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/sharedlib-screenshot.png"><br>
	<br>
	</p>
	<h2>Plug-in Manager Improvements</h2>
	In
	the past if you had a slow connection and were downloading
	various plug-ins, the IDE would be unusable until the plug-ins were
	downloaded and installed. In version 6.1 you can run the download
	task in the background, as seen on the screenshot. The IDE also
	shows a visual indication in case new plug-ins have been discovered.<br>
	<br>
	<table style="text-align: left; width: 724px; height: 190px;" border="0"
	cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
	<tbody>
	<tr>
	<td style="vertical-align: top;"><img
	style="width: 412px; height: 178px;"
	alt="Download Plugins Bar in NetBeans 6.1"
	src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/downloadbar-screenshot.png"></td>
	<td style="vertical-align: top;"><img
	style="width: 271px; height: 146px;"
	alt="Plugin Update in NetBeans 6.1"
	src="../../images_www/articles/nb61/plugin-update-screenshot.png"><br>
	</td>
	</tr>
	</tbody>
	</table>
	<p><br>
	</p>
	<h2>Mercurial Support</h2>
	The NetBeans source code base has been moved from CVS to Mercurial,
	which
	is a distributed versioning system. This change brings many
	advantages to the NetBeans IDE, including the ability to have several
	levels of repositories, easier branching and more. For this reason,
	NetBeans 6.1 now also provides built-in Mercurial support, along with
	CVS
	and Subversion.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>Popular Features are Back</h2>
	Due
	to editor infrastructure changes some of the popular features had to
	be dropped in the 6.0 release because there was not enough time to
	rewrite them to the new infrastructure. These features have been
	added back in version 6.1:<br>
	<br>
	<ul>
	<li> JSF pages from entities wizard </li>
	<li> Java Beans support </li>
	<li> BeanInfo editor </li>
	</ul>
	<h2>Ruby Additions</h2>
	Rails 2.0 is now supported and bundled with NetBeans IDE 6.1. There
	is also a
	new platform manager for Ruby which lets you choose easily between
	native Ruby and JRuby runtimes. The Ruby editor has been integrated
	into the Task List feature, and many quick fixes have been added to
	make
	Ruby
	editing even more productive. Many other usability and productivity
	improvements have been integrated, check the <a
	href="http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy">New and
	Noteworthy page</a>
	for a complete list of changes.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>More Technologies Supported</h2>
	NetBeans
	6.1 added support for many additional technologies and frameworks:<br>
	<br>
	<ul>
	<li> Sailfin v1 support (SIP application server based on project
	Glassfish) </li>
	<li> WebSphere 6.0 and 6.1 supported now out of the box </li>
	<li> Spring framework now supported out of the box </li>
	<li> Groovy and Grails plug-ins now available on the update center </li>
	<li> Hibernate framework plug-in now
	available on the update center </li>
	<li> Axis2 plug-in now available on the update center </li>
	<li> PHP plug-in available in preview </li>
	</ul>
	<h2>MySQL Support</h2>
	Due to the recent acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems, the
	NetBeans IDE
	6.1 added integration with MySQL. You can start or stop the MySQL
	server right from the IDE. A default connection is generated for you,
	and you can browse database tables easily and create connections to
	these tables with one click. Getting started developing with
	the NetBeans IDE and MySQL is even easier than before.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>Mobility</h2>
	In the Java ME area, Mac OS X is now officially supported and the
	Mpower
	emulater can be easily used from the IDE. Several new SVG components
	have been added and the quality and stability of Mobility Pack has
	been enhanced as well.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>RESTful Web Services Support</h2>
	The RESTful web service support in the Netbeans IDE is based on the
	JSR
	311 standard. The IDE has a wizard to create RESTful services from
	JPA entity classes. You can also create RESTful services based on
	popular design patterns provided by the IDE. Another wizard generates
	JavaScript client stubs that invoke these services. A popular feature
	is the test client that provides an interactive way to test and view
	the result of web service invocations. RESTful web service support
	was available since NetBeans 6.0 as a plugin, now it is part of the
	Netbeans IDE 6.1 standard distribution.<br>
	<br>
	<h2>Support for Popular SaaS Services</h2>
	The Web Services node in the Services tab has been enhanced to
	support SaaS (Software as a Service) services such as services
	provided by Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and YouTube. This feature enables
	Java
	developers to easily create mashup applications using those services.
	Developers can simply drag and drop operations under those services
	into a POJO, Servlet, JSP or RESTful web service and the IDE will
	generate all the plumbing code to access those services.<br>
	<br>
	<br>
	There are many other new features I didn't discuss yet – for
	example the improved Javadoc code completion, inspect members and
	inspect hierarchy improvements, SOAP UI monitor integration, WSDL,
	XML and XSD editor enhancements and much more. Again, please visit
	the New and Noteworthy page for NetBeans 6.1 to see all the
	improvements.<br>
	<br>
	Although NetBeans 6.1 is a point release, the amount of new features
	is very impressive. It is clear that NetBeans is going to
	expand into new communities mainly because it currently provides a
	very large collection of new plug-ins for various technologies that
	were not well supported before, such as JavaScript, Groovy, PHP,
	Hibernate, Spring, Axis and others. Thanks to the performance fixes
	NetBeans will appeal to users with older computers who wouldn't
	consider NetBeans before. Again, these are exciting days for the
	NetBeans community!<br>
	<br>

	For more information about NetBeans IDE 6.1 visit:<br><br>
	NetBeans IDE 6.1 <a href="../../features/index.html">Features Pages</a><br></li>
	NetBeans IDE 6.1 <a href="../../kb/index.html">Tutorials and Documentation</a></li><br><br>
	As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback on our <a href="https://netbeans.org/community/lists/top.html">mailing lists</a> and on your <a href="http://planetnetbeans.org/">blogs</a>.
	<div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(May
	2008)</span><br>
	</div>
	</body>
	</html>