Java News from Thursday, July 10, 2008

Sun has posted the first milestone of NetBeans 6.5, its open source IDE for Java, Ruby, JavaScript, C++, and now PHP and Groovy. New features in 6.5 (though not all are present in this milestone) include

• UNC paths on Windows
• File Associations options panel and Open As... action
• Running some IDE distributions on JRE
• QuickSearch
• Variable based paths in J2SE/J2EE projects
• Eclipse project import and synchronization
• Enhanced Java Web Start support
• Platform
• Sliding windows support original window sizes
• Possibility to configure some Window System properties for applications based on Platform
• TreeTableView replacement introduced
• Opening Options dialog with preselected subcategories
• Support allowing a user to drop a text into the palette
• PHP
• Features first introduced in Early Access for PHP
• Enhancements in Code Completion
• Database-related code snippets
• Find Usages
• Multiple project configurations
• CSS
• CSS code completion
• Ajax
• JavaScript Debugger
• JavaScript Library Manager
• Bundled JavaScript Libraries
• Javadoc Analyzer
• Call Hierarchy
• Formatting Settings per Project
• CamelCase code completion
• Improved Encapsulate Fields Refactoring
• Option to remove whitespace at end of line
• Improved XML and Schema Tools
• Groovy
• Grails support
• Improved New Connection dialog
• SQL history dialog
• Server Support
• GlassFish V3 integration module.
• Web frameworks (Spring, Hibernate, JSF, JSF CRUD Generator, JPA)
• Spring
• Hibernate (Available via Development Update center for M1)
• JSF, JSF CRUD Generator
• JPA
• Mobility
• Databinding
• Custom Component Support
• New SVG Support
• Debugger
• New Multithreaded Debugging Support
• Debugging Window
• Current Thread Chooser
• 'Other Thread(s) Suspended Here' Gutter Navigation
• Deadlock Detection
• New Threading Model
• GUI Builder
• ButtonGroup visualization
• Preview in Nimbus look and feel
• TreeModel editor
• ListModel and ComboBoxModel usability enhancements
• Web Services
• RESTful services from database
• Consuming popular SaaS services in Php
• C/C++
• Code completion accuracy
• Call Graph
• Error highlighting and more types of semantic highlighting
• Ruby