What's New in NetBeans 3.6?
Thanks to several members of the NetBeans community who contributed this
page.
Window Navigation
- Arrange windows with drag and drop. Drag any window to anywhere
in the IDE except the Source Editor and release. A red preview box shows
you the window's target destination.
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- Easy window navigation. Press Ctrl-` to toggle through the
open IDE windows and documents. This feature is like using Alt-Tab on
most operating system window managers.
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- Integrated task-related windows. Workspaces from NetBeans IDE
3.5 have been replaced with task-related windows that display automatically
when you perform certain tasks. For example, the Debugger windows appear
automatically when you start a debugging session and hide when you finish
the session.
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Appearance and LookAndFeel
- IDE uses the native LookAndFeel for Windows and MacOS. The
IDE uses Aqua on MacOS, Classic on Windows 2000, and the desktop theme
on Windows XP. On all other platforms, the IDE uses the Java (Metal)
LookAndFeel. You can set a different LookAndFeel by starting the IDE
with the
--laf LaF_class_name switch.
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- Redesigned property sheet. The new property sheet is more compact,
runs faster, and allows one-click editing of all properties. There's
also a description area that displays information about the selected
property.
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Editor Improvements
- Code folding. You can hide method bodies, comments, import
statements, and other blocks of code by folding them in the Source Editor.
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- Overriding methods. The Source Editor marks all inherited methods
in the the left margin. Hold your mouse over the icon to see which class
or interface the method is inherited from.
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- To Do window. You can easily track your tasks and TODO comments
using the To Do window. You can view all tasks in a single file or in
a selected directory.
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- Automatic insertion of closing bracket/quotes/parentheses. The
Source Editor now automatically closes all open parentheses, brackets,
and quotes. For example, type System.out.println( and the IDE
automatically enters the closing ).
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- Form Editor integration. The Form Editor has been integrated
as a tab in the Source Editor. The GUI Editing workspace has been replaced
with with Palette, Inspector, and Properties windows that appear automatically
whenever a Form Editor tab is selected.
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- Print as HTML. You can take any Java file and output it to
formatted HTML for publishing on the web.
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- Tooltip error description. Hold the mouse over any text containing
compilation errors to view the error in a tooltip.
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- Easy splitting of the Source Editor. Drag and drop any open
document tab to the bottom or left margin of the Source Editor to view
multiple documents at once.
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Web/J2EE Development
- Servlet 2.4 & JSP 2.0. The parser database has been upgraded
to support Servlet 2.4 and JSP 2.0 specifications.
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- Tomcat 5. You can deploy and debug two-tier J2EE 1.4 and 1.3
applications to Tomcat 5 in the IDE.
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- Case-sensitive HTML code completion. HTML code completion now
enters the tags in uppercase or lowercase instead of in uppercase only.
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- Opening/closing tag matching. Put your text caret in any tag
to highlight its closing tag.
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- Validate JSP. The IDE provides a Validate action for JSPs instead
of a Compile action. The Validate action detects all syntax problems
except for syntax errors that occur at translation time. These types
of errors are usually limited to files that contain embedded scriptlets.
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Ant Support
- Ant 1.6.1 integration. The IDE now comes bundled with Ant
1.6.1.
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- Easy management of the Ant classpath. Go to Ant Settings in
the Options window and add any additional directories or libraries to
Ant's classpath using the Additional Classpath property.
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- Easy management of Ant versions. Go to Ant Settings in the
Options window and choose any Ant installation in the Ant Home property.
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JUnit Support
- JUnit 3.8.1 support. JUnit 3.8.1 comes bundled with NetBeans
IDE. You can automatically generate tests and test suites in both text
and GUI mode.
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Version Control Integration
- Streamlined CVS design. Both the built-in CVS client and command-line
CVS support have been harmonized to use the same wizards, property editors,
and command dialog boxes.
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- Improved display of VCS command output. The output for all
VCS commands are now displayed as tabs in the VCS Output window. You
can view the command's progress and stop any running command.
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Help System Improvements
- Unified Help system. NetBeans IDE merges the help for all modules
into a single table of contents and index for easier navigation.
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Other Changes
- The IDE is no longer runs on v. 1.3.1 of the JavaTM
2 SDK, Standard Edition and is no longer tested on v. 1.4.0 and 1.4.1.
The recommended JDK version is 1.4.2.
- File Size and Modification Time added to the property sheets for some
nodes.
- There is no longer a filter toolbar in the Debugger window. You can
access all debugger windows in the Windows > Debugger menu.
- The Startup folder was removed from the Options window, so there is
no longer a way in the user interface to specify classes that are run
in the IDE at IDE startup.
- Apache's regular expression library is no longer included in the IDE.
The IDE now uses the java.util.regex package for regular expression
support. Non-standard POSIX-like character classes ([:javastart:]
and [:javapart:]) are no longer supported.
- It is no longer possible to have more than one instance of the IDE
run simultaneously on the same user directory.
- IDE command-line switches can now be entered in GNU style, meaning
they are preceeded with two dashes (for example, --jdkhome)
rather than one. Single letter switches like -h and JVM flags
are still entered with one dash.
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