Monday January 30, 2006
Monday January 30, 2006
Another Useless NetBeans IDE Tutorial
Imagine you're me. You spend quite a bit of time writing tutorials for plug-in module development in NetBeans IDE 5.0. For example, you write the NetBeans Help System Plug-in Tutorial. Step by step, the reader is shown how to create all the twiddly little files that are needed before you can start writing help files for your helpsystem. (And, at the end, the reader has fallen into a cunning trap—ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not including a helpsystem with their plug-in module.) But, then, you look in the latest builds, that are available from the download page on http://www.netbeans.org. What do you see in the New File wizard!? Well, take look at this picture:
Now, if you're me (and probably, only if you're me), you're thinking: "Doh! Now my &%$#@$%$# tutorial is obsolete!" However, if you're the rest of the world, it's great news—setting up a helpsystem is as simple as selecting a template from the New File wizard. And then you get all the basic files you need, including a sample HTML file (which has a small tribute to the tutorial—the sample text you'll find in this template is "This is the greatest plug-in in the world!"). All you then need to do is create a property called "jhall.jar" in the nbproject/private.properties file (so that you can compile the helpsystem) and then you can just start adding HTML files and linking them together (don't forget to register each topic in the map file, table of contents file, and index file).
By the way, if you look at the screenshot above, you'll see two additional brand new templates: "Module Installer" and "Update Center". Now, I'm not sure what that Module Installer template is all about, but that Update Center template looks pretty interesting, hmmm... let's take it for a spin...
Jan 30 2006, 03:58:31 AM PST Permalink
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