Oracle has released a new version of the open-source NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE), NetBeans 6.9, which expands the tool suite’s support for JavaFX and the Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi).
Oracle officials called the release a reaffirmation of the company’s commitment to the open-source and NetBeans developer community, as Oracle has shown it is serious about extending the NetBeans platform following its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which heretofore controlled the NetBeans release cadence.
Available as of June 16, NetBeans IDE 6.9 introduces JavaFX Composer, a visual editor and layout tool for building JavaFX applications. With JavaFX Composer, organizations can quickly build, visually edit and debug Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and bind components to various data sources, including databases and Web services.
NetBeans IDE 6.9 also offers OSGi interoperability, enabling developers to easily create OSGi bundles for applications based on the NetBeans Platform.
“NetBeans 6.9 continues the tradition of providing the best open-source IDE for Java application developers,” said Ted Farrell, chief architect and senior vice president of Tools and Middleware at Oracle, in a statement. “This is the first NetBeans release under Oracle’s stewardship, and we have continued to focus on the visual tooling capabilities within the IDE. We believe that the ease of use and developer productivity provided by NetBeans is key in helping developers of any skill level take advantage of all of the great Java technologies.”
Moreover, NetBeans IDE 6.9 enables developers to rapidly create Web, enterprise, desktop and mobile applications using the Java platform, JavaFX and scripting languages. And the tool set is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Oracle Solaris.
NetBeans IDE 6.9 provides improved editing and development capabilities, including improved Java language editing with more than 80 new “hints,” to enhance developer productivity. The new version of NetBeans also features additional support for Java Enterprise Edition 6, including Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI), also known as Java Specification Request 299 (JSR-299).
NetBeans 6.9 also includes:
- Enhanced JavaFX script editing and refactoring.
- Support for CSS code completion, find usages and renaming capabilities for HTML and CSS.
- The ability to quickly code, test and deploy OSGi bundles using Maven and Felix.
- Bundled Felix container with the ability to deploy other containers, such as Equinox.
- Support for the Spring 3.0 framework; PHP Zend framework, as well as better PHP formatting and code completion; Ruby on Rails 3.0; and specification of which gems the IDE should reference.