New and Noteworthy in NetBeans 6.0 Milestone 8

Profiler

• NetBeans Profiler has been added to NetBeans IDE 6.0 M8. There is no need to download and run separate NetBeans Profiler installer.

• Select Profiling Task dialog has been redesigned

• Profiling points were reimplemented: stability and usability has been improved

New, editable Diff

Diff panes across NetBeans IDE (in CVS, Subversion, Local History) have a brand new look and feel. Tu summarize new features:

• right Diff pane is a fully functional editor with semantic coloring and code completion (if the right pane displays a local file)
• one-click merging of differences from left to right, there is Actions sidebar in the center
• no more empty lines, both right and left panes are compact
• word-diff is executed whenever possible to only highlight concrete words that have changed on a line

More CVS RFEs

• CVS module has now some Options in Tools/Options, for example you can customize the format of CVS Status Labels
• There is a new menu action CVS/View Revision... that lets you quickly open a file in a specific revision, tag or branch
• There is a new menu action CVS/Change CVS Root... that rewrites CVS/Root files recursively in the given context with whatever new CVS Root you enter
• Merge dialog is improved to provide more posibilities to specify starting and ending points of the merge
• You can now Export Diff Patch from within Search History views by selecting commits to be included in the patch
• Diff View of Search History now contains a new Location column to let you quicky distinguish files with same names
• CVS Update action now shows list of files that have been updated (or removed) by the command in a sortable table similar to CVS Versioning View

More SVN RFEs

• Subversion module has a new menu action Subversion/Relocate that rewrites working copy URL metadata in the given context.

Debugger usability improvements

• Debugger sources in Reusable Tab - editor panes are reused, when opening files from debugger.
• Invalid breakpoint handling
  • Broken icon in editor and Breakpoints view represents invalid breakpoint
    
  • Explanation messages are written to the debugger console
    
• Better support for multithreaded debugging
  • When "Debug Current Thread" option is selected on a debugger session in Session view, stepping is performed just in the current thread, no other threads are resumed.
  • When a step is interrupted by a breakpoint, a dialog is opened, suggesting either to continue with the step, or stop on the breakpoint.

JUnit

• Improved progress bar granularity (per test method)
• Added support for JUnit 4 tests - generating of test skeletons, execution

Visual Web

The following features are in M8:

• Visual Web capability integrated with the standard NetBeans web project type as a web project Framework.
• Add a visual page to a "non-visual" project simply by selecting JSF Visual pages from the file templates dialog. See project spec for details
• Visual Web Application project no longer listed in the Create Project Wizard.
• Component Data Binding for databases via D&D from Runtime Tab with the exception of VIEWS. Data source node in Application Outline
• SQL Query editor - full functionality
• DataSource Alignment - includes removing context.xml from userdir in favor of storing DS references in project
• Common Page Flow Editor for NetBeans - Ability to link pages, but not via buttons. Button linking in M9
• JDBC resource configuration during deployment - includes automatic configuration of web.xml and sun-web.xml deployment descriptors
• Migrate Visual Web Java modeler to Retouche Phase II - except specific support for Nav editor

The following features will NOT make it into M8:

• Services palette
• Visual Portlet Builder
• Visual Data Binding for web services
• Visual Data Binding for EJBs
• Visual CSS editor
• Visual Web Refactoring Support
• D&D databinding from VIEWS node in Runtime Tab

Editor

• Merge of "normal" and smart codecompletion to one shorcut
• Faster Go To Type
• Generate code dialog
• Navigational outlines (Phase 1)
  • Inspect Members and Inspect Hierarchy Actions - show the members and hierarchy pop up windows for selected Java file or Java editor.
    
  • Members window - shows the members and Javadoc of the selected Java type.
    
  • Hierarchy Window - shows the hierarchy and Javadoc of selected Java type.
    
  • Inspect Members and Inspect Hierarchy Actions for type under the caret - show the members and hierarchy pop up windows for Java type at the caret in Java Editor.
    
• Declaration and Javadoc views - these views show the declaration and javadoc of the Java type under the caret in Java editor. To show these views use Window:Declaration View and Window:Javadoc View menu items.

openide/text

• Support for reusable editor tabs (API to be used e.g. by debugger) See #94607

Project system

Includes & excludes

You can now specify packages or single classes to exclude from your source tree. Details

Project Extensibility

From your module code you can now extend the Netbeans Modules project type (#95366) and the ant freeform project type (#90562) UI.

API Enhancements

• Palette: #90213 #88400
• Window System: #96338
• Navigator: #93711
• Encoding query: #42638
• Language independent refactoring API: #89605

Window System

Support for SDI mode (Single Document Interface - individual separated frames mode) was removed and was replaced by support of undockable/floating windows using Drag and Drop, which already worked from Milestone 2 builds. Details in #81330

UML

The UML Modeling module has been added to NetBeans 6. The UML functionalities available are equivalent to those delivered in the NetBeans 5.5 release, with the exception of the code generation feature. The code generation functionality will start to appear in later milestones.

What's New

• The Diagram Editor now has alignment tools available (78195).

• The Diagram Editor now has distribute tools available (78195).

• New Window Layout.
  1. Documentation window is by default docked to properties window area.
  2. Design center window is now by default docked to explorer area.

• Added a save as action to diagram nodes. The save as action allows a diagram to be duplicated. (83788, 79771, 75894)
• 27 issues fixed.

Distribution

• NetBeans Update Center
• NBI Installer

Mobility

Game Builder

Visual editing support for MIDP 2.0 Game API including creation and editing of Sprites, TiledLayers and their arrangement into scenes. The main goal of the Game Builder module is to reduce the effort involved in creating common game components.

The following screen-shot shows the New Tiled Layer dialog which allows user to create a new tiled layer using the appropriate image resource with the correct tile size.

Once a new tiled layer is created it can be edited using the available visual editor. This allows the user to modify the contents of the tiled layer and receive instant visual feedback. The tiled layer editor also includes support for animated tiles.

Another layer type supported by the Game Builder is Sprite. In the gaming context, sprites usually serve as animated characters or objects. The screen-shot below shows the dialog used to create a new sprite.

Game Builder treats sprites as a collection of animated sequences where each sprite can be contain a number of sequences. The sprite editor allows editing and previewing of multiple animated sequences simultaneously.Below is a screen-shot showing sprite editor in action.

The scene editor is provided to organize all layers (sprites and tiled layers) together into scenes.

New custom components

Four new custom components in the Palette of new Visual Designer:

• File Browser
• SMS Composer
• Login Screen
• PIM Browser

Palette with new custom components

File Browser - File Browser custom component lets the user list files and directories. It's uses FileConnection? Optional Package (JSR 75). The FileConnection? Optional Package APIs give J2ME devices access to file systems residing on mobile devices, primarily access to removable storage media such as external memory cards.

Login Screen - The login screen custom components performs some interaction behind the scenes for validation purposes.

SMS Composer - provides an easy and convenient way to send SMS message from Java ME application.

PIM Browser - Uses PIM API which gives access to the Personal Information Management (PIM) database including to-do lists, calendars and contact data. Requires JSR 75.

Example MIDP application with new custom components

Attachments

AlignmentMenu.png		57435 bytes
BrokenBreakpoints_editor.png		14763 bytes
BrokenBreakpoints_msg.png		22113 bytes
DistributeMenu.png		59408 bytes
JUnit4.gif		7966 bytes
cvs-update-m8.png		4730 bytes
declarationandjavadoc.jpg		324400 bytes
diff-m8.png		18339 bytes
hierarchy.jpg		367601 bytes
inspectatcaretmenuitems.jpg		214499 bytes
inspecthierarchy.jpg		359014 bytes
inspectmembers.jpg		376047 bytes
inspectmenuitems.jpg		112829 bytes
members.jpg		366638 bytes
netbeans_uml.png		364072 bytes
svn-relocate.png		9733 bytes