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| <meta content="Tori Wieldt" name="AUTHOR"> |
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| <h1>First Stop: Beijing - Tales from the NetBeans Day WorldTour</h1> |
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| <div class="articledate" style="margin-left:0px;">Released: 13 Sept 2005</div> |
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| <p><img src="https://netbeans.org/images_www/banners/nb-world-tour-265-79.jpg" |
| width="265" height="79" style="margin-right:15px; float:left;" alt="NetBeans WorldTour"> |
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| After the success of NetBeans Day - San Francisco, NetBeans Team has hit the road for a ten city |
| around-the-world tour. Our first stop was in Beijing on Monday, 12 September. Over 500 developers gathered at the |
| city's Hotel Nikko to hear presentations from our finest technicians, meet other community members, and stock up |
| on t-shirts, CDs, and other related tsotchkes.</p> |
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| <p><img src="https://netbeans.org/images_www/articles/worldtour/nbchina-attendees2.jpeg" |
| width="320" height="240" style="margin-left:15px; float:right" alt="NetBeans day China -- the crowd"></a> |
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| Sun Tools architect and distinguished engineer <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/brewin">Bob Brewin</a> |
| was scheduled to moderate the event. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and he was stranded in Japan. |
| <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jag">James Gosling</a> stepped in and hosted the day. As the crowd |
| ate their hamburgers and French fries, Gosling gave an overview of Java technology and NetBeans. He explained |
| that Java provides a homogenous view of the heterogeneous environment developers typically have to work in. |
| “Rather than ‘write once, run anywhere’, what is more important to developers is |
| ‘<i>Learn</i> once, work anywhere’,” he said. As the crowd asked for more information on the |
| next release of the Java platform, Gosling explained that it's the community that makes Java work. Even he doesn't |
| know what will be in the next release because the Java developer community ultimately determines the platform's |
| features through their involvement in the <a href="http://www.jcp.org">Java Community Process</a>.</p> |
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| <p>Netbeans Evangelist <a href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/timboudreau">Tim Boudreau</a> explained the new |
| features in Netbeans 4.1. He also gave several demonstrations that showed how to import an existing project with |
| an Ant build script into NetBeans, profile code, and quickly create unit tests. Boudreau finished with a quick |
| peak of <a href="https://netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=642">Matisse</a>, the powerful new GUI |
| feature coming in NetBeans 5.0. He said cross-platform layout is a challenge for all developers, and while the |
| grid-bag layout is powerful, it's also hard to use. While he dragged and dropped components into place, Boudreau |
| explained that GUIs built in Matisse will know and follow the guidelines for a particular platform (Windows, Mac, |
| Java) and adjust accordingly.</p> |
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| <p> |
| <img src="https://netbeans.org/images_www/articles/worldtour/nbchina-stage.jpeg" |
| width="320" height="240" style="margin-left:15px; float:right" alt="NetBeans day China -- Gregg Sporar, James Gosling"></a> |
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| Boudreau's presentation was followed up with a lively Q and A session. Attendees asked questions about the |
| Visual Editor, JavaServer Faces support, struts, Maven, and plug-in support. He was also asked to describe the |
| differences between NetBeans and two other leading Java IDEs: |
| <a href="http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/index.jsp">Sun's Java Studio Creator</a> and IBM's |
| Eclipse. One attendee in particular asked him “what are the three most important reasons for me to switch |
| from Eclipse to NetBeans?” Boudreau responded by describing NetBeans improved usability and four other |
| specifics:</p> |
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| <ol> |
| <li>NetBeans is standards-based (for example, the new GUI builder, Matisse)</li> |
| <li>Increased productivity (Ant-based projects)</li> |
| <li>J2EE support</li> |
| <li>J2ME support</li> |
| </ol> |
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| <p>NetBeans Evangelist <a href="http://weblogs.java.net./blog/gsporar/">Gregg Sporar</a> came next and wowed the |
| crowd when he opened his presentation with “Hello, I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese,” in Mandarin. He then went on |
| to describe the J2EE support in NetBeans. “NetBeans knows about the plumbing of J2EE so you don't have to,” Sporar |
| said in English. NetBeans supports the J2EE developer with tight integration with web servers and app servers, and |
| cool tools like a J2EE editor and a deployment descriptor wizard. He finished his presentation by showing how you can view, |
| open, and run <a href="http://java.sun.com/reference/blueprints/index.html">Java BluePrints</a> from within NetBeans.</p> |
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| <p><img src="https://netbeans.org/images_www/articles/worldtour/nbchina-gosling2.jpeg" |
| width="320" height="240" style="margin-left:15px; float:right" alt="NetBeans day China attendees chatting with James Gosling"></a> |
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| Up next came engineer Martin Ryzl who showed the mobility support in NetBeans. Ryzl demonstrated building a mobile app in |
| the Visual Mobile Designer by dragging and dropping MIDP components like text boxes and a progress bar. He then showed how |
| to create ‘conditional text’ based on the target device. The crowd also showed a lot of interest in 3-D graphics.</p> |
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| <p>NetBeans Day - China ended with a Java community event. Gosling and the other presenters came back on stage for a final |
| Q and A session. The attendees asked them many tough questions, but one in particular resonated with the entire audience: |
| how can improvements in a Western IDE meet the needs of Chinese developers? Boudreau took the question by describing |
| academic research efforts on usability and the opportunity for Chinese developers to become involved in future NetBeans |
| usability studies. Most important, he emphasized, was that Chinese developers get involved and become active members of the |
| NetBeans <a href="https://netbeans.org/community/index.html">community</a>. As all NetBeans Day China attendees received |
| a NetBeans CD, with 4.1 in Simplified Chinese, they are well on their way |
| to becoming part of our growing, dynamic community.</p> |
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| <p>The next stop of our worldTour is Tokyo in November. For more information on this and other upcoming venues, see |
| our NetBeans worldTour site.</p> |
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