« another record Java... | Main | Edgar Silva and... »
Monday Apr 03, 2006

NetBeans and Looking Glass

What does NetBeans and Looking Glass have to do with each other?

About 9 months ago I started showing NetBeans IDE building and running the popular Looking Glass Java 3D desktop. The demo has always been quite popular. But, there have been a few folks who have been critical of the demo. I will spare them the embarrassment of calling them out explicitly. As I recall, one blogger complained that he did not understand why Looking Glass had presence at last year's NetBeans Day San Francisco. Perhaps that was an innocent question. Or, perhaps he did not see or understand the connection? Another blogger complained he did not understand what Looking Glass had to do with NetBeans and Java development or what it had to do with making him a more productive Java programmer.

Perhaps the screen shot of NetBeans below will answer their questions?

What is it?

It is the Looking Glass 3D window manager running inside NetBeans IDE as a plug-in. What you are looking at is what is called the 'spring test' Looking Glass example application.

What does this mean?

It means any Looking Glass application and visualization is possible in the NetBeans IDE and the NetBeans Platform. Think of the possibilities!

Imagine being able to debug an application in three dimensions, being able to view multiple threads and their relationship with each other as a program is executing with the current executing thread rotating to the foreground. Imagine looking at UML diagrams in 3D and being able to rotate them so you can better understand. I have seen many UML diagrams that are impossible to understand in 2D.

3D visualizations would likely be useful for education too. Imagine if the first time you were exposed to recursion you could have seen a 3D visualization of what was happening in a recursive method.

Think of the rich client applications you could build on top of the NetBeans Platform too.

Posted at 11:00AM Apr 03, 2006 by charliebrown in Java  |  Comments[11]

Comments:

I just have 2 words: WOW!

This opens a hole new world of possibilities. Men you just rocked my world!!!

Posted by Daniel D. Mendes on April 04, 2006 at 06:44 AM CDT #

Just because you can, it doesn't mean you should.

Posted by AdrianM on April 04, 2006 at 12:16 PM CDT #

Really nice - so how to achieve this? Any code as a starting point available? (maybe you could put this into contrib at netbeans ;-)

Posted by Sven Reimers on April 04, 2006 at 02:01 PM CDT #

As AdrianM did say: "it doesn't means you should"... it means that you MUST do it. Keep forward Hunt!

Posted by Gregory Alfaro Morales on April 04, 2006 at 02:12 PM CDT #

In the near future (when I have some free cycles) the source code for what you saw in the blog will be going into netbeans.org CVS (somewhere). I will blog when it is available along with some instructions on how to run it and some configuration information.

Posted by huntch (aka charliebrown) on April 04, 2006 at 03:32 PM CDT #

The obvious immediate usage is to start another NetBeans session within the bundled 3D desktop, so that within this embedded NetBeans, you can debug Eclipse debugging the Java EE 5 GlassFish Application Server... You follow me, don't you? Good work Charlie:-) Ludo

Posted by ludo on April 04, 2006 at 10:40 PM CDT #

Hi Charlie, Why don't you blog more often? We miss you in the blogosphere... :-( Cheers, Antonio

Posted by Antonio on April 05, 2006 at 06:45 AM CDT #

Try Yahoo Widgets and imagine the 3D mini application without the Looking Glass background. I want my application run also in and outside looking glass environment. This is same kind of mistake KDE and Gnome team have done (i.e. there application doesn't run on windows without loading all the desktop). We don't want to repeat there mistake again. http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Posted by Faisal Akeel on April 05, 2006 at 11:54 AM CDT #

I agree with by Daniel. While it is a cool idea I can see it being handy for times when you are trying to view large datasets which are hard to visualize normally. For example software metrics e.t.c But I don't think using Netbeans without it will in anyway make me a less productive programmer.

Posted by Adam Freeman on April 06, 2006 at 03:31 PM CDT #

Imagine if the first time you were exposed to recursion you could have seen a 3D visualization of what was happening
Yeh I can just imagine a load of first year comp science students doing that for themselves. I couldn't possibly think of a quicker way to crash an entire lab of computers!

Posted by Dave on April 07, 2006 at 04:26 AM CDT #

I think it's over kill. It's like we're trying to think of applications for Looking Glass, as opposed to the tradional "need is the mother of all invention" approach. We can already create 3D content in Java. I would think getting Java3D right could achieve the same results in applications, without the un needed 3D desktop. The fact that it runs in Netbeans is pointless, to me.

Posted by Anthony Bennis on April 07, 2006 at 10:21 AM CDT #

Post a Comment:
Comments are closed for this entry.