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In the beginning, code was written using simple text-based tools like Notepad. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll define “beginning” as the early to mid-1990s, when Java first started to become popular. Using the combination of a text editor and command prompt, users could write and compile code.

To start using NetBeans, you just need to download and install it. This chapter describes how to do that, as well as check for updates and customize some NetBean settings to suit your own preferences. Finally, we’ll take a quick look at the NetBeans window you’ll use most often.

In the NetBeans IDE, all Java development takes place within a project. Projects allow a developer to relate or group a set of application files together, whether those files are Java sources, XML configuration files, or bitmap images. NetBeans uses the Ant tool to internally compile and build its projects, as discussed in Chapter 14.

Several options are available in NetBeans for creating and working with web applications. The first and most traditional is the Web Application project type. Prior to NetBeans 5.5, this was the only type of web project you could use. NetBeans 5.5 added support for a new project type called Visual Web Application, which is covered in the next chapter.

The Visual Web Pack (VWP) is a recent addition to the NetBeans family of tools. Starting with NetBeans 5.5, you can add powerful features for working with JSF, Ajax, and data binding.

Enterprise Java covers several diverse topics like JSF, JSP, Servlets, JMS, and EJBs. An EJB is a server-side Java class that contains business logic. The EJB does not need to provide an implementation of various features like security and transactional control. The EJB container that runs the application typically provides those features. NetBeans 5.5 supports the EJB 3.0 standard.

The concept of software as a service is not new. People in the IT community have been discussing it for years. A related idea in software architecture, , involves making portions of software separate and loosely coupled. Web services provide this loose coupling by separating software components.

Many programmers agree that modeling can help in planning and designing software. You need to be able to document the design of your program. You may also want to model customer use cases for people who will interact with a system, model a sequence of messages in a communication protocol, or model the possible states that a system can have. Performing this type of design work well in advance of your project implementation can save a lot of time and money. Having an object-based road map can also help ensure your software systems are better designed and easier to maintain.

The Source Editor is arguably one of the most important areas of NetBeans. It is where developers write new code, rework existing code, refine their documentation, and perform many other tasks.

This chapter covers two time-saving features that NetBeans provides for programmers: code completion and code templates. Code completion allows you to enter the name of a class, interface, package, field, or method without having to type the entire name. A code template is a block of text or code that can be automatically inserted into your file by typing only a few characters.