Hi folks,
We had a great chat today with David Botterill and Brian Leonard on NetBeans 6.0. For those of you who didn't make it, the transcript is below. Hope to see you at our next event on February 14, 2008 at 10am PST in the Developer Playground when we chat with the writers of java,sun.com. :)

[10:06] You: Hello and welcome to SDN's chat on NetBeans . I'm Heidi Dailey, Web Marketing Manager for Sun Developer Network
[10:06] You: It's my pleasure to introduce
[10:07] You: Brian Leonard and David Botterill
[10:07] You: BOth are NetBeans Technology Evangelists at SUn Microsystems
[10:07] You: To help the chat run smoothly we have a few guidelines.
[10:07] You: If you wish to ask a qustion enter "@" in your chat line.
[10:08] You: I will note the at you have a questions to ask. PLease type you r question and wait for me to call on you.
[10:08] You: When called, submit your question.
[10:08] You: With that, I'll turn the floor over to Brian and David.
[10:09] Evil Flare: Hi, I'm Brian Leonard. I've been on the NetBeans team now for just over 3 years.
[10:09] DavidB Schism: Welcome, my name is David Botterill
[10:09] DavidB Schism: I'm currently a NetBeans Evangelist. My specialty area is web development.
[10:10] Evil Flare: Over the past year I've been focusing on our support for Ruby on Rails, and just yesterday I posted a blog on Grails.
[10:10] You: Brian, can you give us an overview of NetBeans 6.0?
[10:10] Evil Flare: Hopefully most of you know that we just released NetBeans 6.0 in December.
[10:11] Evil Flare: It has a revamped editor, integrated profiler, support for Ruby and Rails, support for Swing Databinding and the Application Framework. David, what did I leave out?
[10:12] Evil Flare: Oh yeah, the install experiece is brand new too.
[10:12] DavidB Schism: The installer is revamped and much easier to use
[10:12] DavidB Schism: Also the visual web pack is now a framework under the web development
[10:12] You: Thanks guys. Okay, let's open the floor to questions.
[10:13] Mihai Alter: @
[10:13] You: Go Mihai
[10:14] Mihai Alter: When will NetBeans 6.1 be released ?
[10:15] Evil Flare: Milestone 1 was just released this week. We're shooting for May for the final release.
[10:15] Volg Clawtooth: @
[10:15] Mihai Alter: Great, can you tell us the major new features ?
[10:15] You: Go volg
[10:15] Evil Flare: M1 is what I used for my recent blog on Grails
[10:15] Volg Clawtooth: Does Netbeans 6.0 have any impact (positive or negative) on JVM performance for Java applications developed with it?
[10:15] DavidB Schism: Here's a starting point http://wiki.netbeans.org/NB61NewAndNoteWorthy
[10:16] You: VOlg, we'll get to your question in jsut a moment.
[10:16] Evil Flare: Performance is a big focus on the 6.1 release.
[10:16] Stitch Seale: @
[10:16] DavidB Schism: Also in 6.1 we have Mercurial support, transparent windows, plugin manager background processing, WebSphere 6.0 & 6.1 support, REST Web services
[10:16] DarrylMocek SunMicrosystems: @
[10:18] Evil Flare: JVM Performance Impact - not directly, but using the integrated profiler can with with your application performance
[10:18] You: Stitch, go ahead please
[10:18] Stitch Seale: Okay, I am a student.. beginning on a large java project soon
[10:19] Stitch Seale: why should netbeans 6.0 be interesting for me than other IDEs
[10:20] Evil Flare: Because of the out-of-box experience. It's very easy to install NetBeans and immediatly be productive w/out having to hunt around for plugins. We also have nice integration with BlueJ, a popular Java learning IDE.
[10:20] EUexpat Lockjaw: @
[10:21] Evil Flare: BlueJ projects will open in NetBeans.
[10:21] You: Darryl, go ahead please.
[10:21] DarrylMocek SunMicrosystems: Can you give us more details on where you've improved performance?
[10:22] Evil Flare: Well, it's really where we ARE going to improve performace with 6.1. Startup time!
[10:23] Mihai Alter: @
[10:23] DavidB Schism: In visual web, they've removed the requirement for all the components to be value bound
[10:23] DavidB Schism: this means the design time experience will be much faster
[10:24] DavidB Schism: also the new woodstock components use the new Dojo components making the run time experience better
[10:24] DavidB Schism: faster
[10:24] You: Euexpat you are up
[10:24] EUexpat Lockjaw: I'm an experience microsoft developer working on enterprise solutions for financial institutions who's just getting involved in java. do you have any links or docs available on general debugging? Or any documentation on introducing java debugging for the microsoft crowd?
[10:24] Desperado Cuttita: Boo!
[10:25] You: Play nice!
[10:25] Desperado Cuttita: I'm A Scatting Man!
[10:25] You: Euexpat, did you get the resoures card
[10:26] You: There are some good resources there
[10:26] EUexpat Lockjaw: probably not, I just signed on to SL for this, this afternoon. How do I get that?
[10:26] You: I'll give you one now :)
[10:27] Muslima Questi: @
[10:27] Evil Flare: Here's a link: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/55/using-netbeans/debug.html
[10:27] You: Mihai, go
[10:27] Mihai Alter: Ruby and Rails support is great in Netbeans 6. Are there any plans to support other frameworks like Merb ?
[10:27] Mihai Alter: And how hard would it be for an intermediate programmer to start developing such a plugin ?
[10:28] Evil Flare: Yes, at this point Merb support would probably come from the community.
[10:29] Whoops Babii: @
[10:29] Evil Flare: You could look at what was done with Ruby as an example.
[10:29] DavidB Schism: Also you can look at the Schliemann project that NetBeans has used for other scripting languages
[10:30] DavidB Schism: http://www.netbeans.org/community/magazine/html/03/schliemann/
[10:30] Mihai Alter: Thanks, so you are
[10:30] You: Go ahead Muslima
[10:30] Mihai Alter: saying that it's not hard to develop a plugin for NB
[10:30] Muslima Questi: i tried downloading NetBeans the other day but i got a message telling me that i needed something there before i can go ahead using it
[10:30] Evil Flare: Yes, that's what I'm saying. See http://platform.netbeans.org.
[10:31] Muslima Questi: i tried downloading that, but no luck, did that happen because i downloaded one thing before the other?
[10:31] DavidB Schism: What platform and do you have Java installed?
[10:31] Evil Flare: The only thing you shold need is Java, and there's even a bundle of Java with NetBeans included.
[10:32] Muslima Questi: i am using windows and no i never attempted downloading java before
[10:32] Evil Flare: From here you can get the Java and NetBeans bundle: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
[10:33] Muslima Questi: thanks
[10:33] You: Go ahead WHoops
[10:33] Stitch Seale: @
[10:33] Whoops Babii: what's the difference between creator and Netbeans?
[10:33] EUexpat Lockjaw: @
[10:33] DavidB Schism: Java Studio Creator was a point tool for doing JSF based web development
[10:34] DavidB Schism: the visual JSF development functionality that was in Creator was rolled into the Visual Web Pack for 5.5
[10:34] DavidB Schism: and now it's part of the NetBeans 6.0 IDE
[10:34] Cap Wind: Will NetBeans Visual Web ever get support for portlets?
[10:34] Whoops Babii: cool!
[10:34] DavidB Schism: So now you don't have to use multiple IDEs to do enterprise web applications
[10:34] Whoops Babii: fantastic
[10:35] You: Go ahead stitch
[10:35] Stitch Seale: This is a more personal question
[10:35] Cap Wind: @WIll NB Visual Web JSF ever get support for portlets?
[10:35] Stitch Seale: you said you are programming with ruby on rails
[10:36] Stitch Seale: what kind off applications is ruby on rails most suited for ?
[10:36] You: Cap, David is getting his answer for you
[10:36] You: just one second
[10:36] Cap Wind: thanks
[10:36] Evil Flare: web applications. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework.
[10:36] Stitch Seale: and is there going to be support for other languages in netbeans as well?
[10:36] Evil Flare: Like Struts or JSF is for Java
[10:37] Stitch Seale: like somnething really different like PHP ?
[10:37] Evil Flare: We already support many other languages like C, C++, JavaScript, CSS, HTML.
[10:37] Evil Flare: PHP is coming.
[10:37] Stitch Seale: in 6.1 ?
[10:37] Evil Flare: Groovy was also just added to 6.1
[10:38] You: Cap, David is going to get back to you on that question.
[10:38] Ing Link: http://php.netbeans.org/
[10:38] Evil Flare: No, 6.0 supports the list above
[10:38] Stitch Seale: thanks.
[10:38] Cap Wind: thanks
[10:38] Cap Wind: ok
[10:38] You: EUexpat, go ahead.
[10:38] EUexpat Lockjaw: What links or RSS feeds do you subscribe to, to keep on top of developments in the Java community (excluding the obligatory sun/netbean combo)
[10:39] Evil Flare: I guess JavaLobby would be my primary resource
[10:39] Evil Flare: http://java.dzone.com/
[10:39] Mihai Alter: @
[10:40] You: Go Mihai
[10:40] Mihai Alter: Are there any plans to support other DVCS, like Git ?
[10:40] DavidB Schism: No plans as of yet
[10:40] Whoops Babii: @
[10:40] Figo Rhino: how are the plans for Grails integration?
[10:41] Evil Flare: You can see the plans for Grails here: http://wiki.netbeans.org/Groovygrails
[10:41] You: Whoops, go ahead
[10:42] Whoops Babii: I think you said 6.1 would be available in May. When can we expect to see a beta?
[10:43] DavidB Schism: You can get M1 now, a beta should be around M2 about 1-2 months out.
[10:43] Whoops Babii: excellent! I'll pull M1. Thanks
[10:43] Ing Link: http://wiki.netbeans.org/Development
[10:43] Stitch Seale: @
[10:43] You: Go Stitch
[10:44] Evil Flare: You can see the schedule here: http://wiki.netbeans.org/NB61Milestones
[10:44] Stitch Seale: which database is best support in combination with java in netbeans ?
[10:44] Mihai Alter: I had some issues with M1, reported them
[10:45] Evil Flare: With ship with the drivers for JavaDB, MySQL and Postgress. Others can be easily added.
[10:45] Stitch Seale: and which for java & webapplications
[10:45] DavidB Schism: and JavaDB is part of Glassfish
[10:46] DavidB Schism: integrated tightly with NetBeans
[10:46] Stitch Seale: okay. Are these accessed easy ?
[10:46] Evil Flare: JavaDB is also included with JDK6
[10:46] You: Next question?
[10:47] Stitch Seale: im still wondering if a databased application is easy to setup with netbeans
[10:47] Evil Flare: Yes, if you install NetBeans witht ehe JD6 bundle, it will set the database up for you, including a couple of sample database to work with.
[10:47] Stitch Seale: thanks!
[10:47] DavidB Schism: You can also create a DB from a NetBeans menu
[10:48] DavidB Schism: JavaDB database
[10:48] Evil Flare: Here a good tutorial for you: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/55/derby-demo.html
[10:48] Stitch Seale: thanks!
[10:48] You: Next question?
[10:48] Muslima Questi: @
[10:48] You: Muslima, go ahead
[10:49] Muslima Questi: i never worked with netbeans before and i know extremely little about it, what advise could u give me to speed up the learning process?
[10:49] You: Good question Muslima!
[10:49] DavidB Schism: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/java/quickstart.html
[10:50] Roumen Short: And NetBeans screencasts: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/screencasts.html
[10:50] Yornifer Miles: @
[10:50] Muslima Questi: thanks
[10:50] You: go ahead yournifer
[10:50] Yornifer Miles: Does Netbeans have a reporting feature?
[10:51] Evil Flare: Yes! JasperSoft has just produced their iReport designer as a NetBeans plugin: http://www.jasperforge.org/jaspersoft/opensource/business_intelligence/ireport/page.php?name=iReportNB
[10:51] Seiichi Wisent: @
[10:51] AndroGyne Qinan: @
[10:51] You: GO siichi
[10:52] Seiichi Wisent: NetBeans 6 gave us Ruby support, will NB 6.1 give us Groovy and/or better JavaFX support?
[10:52] You: Siichi?
[10:53] Evil Flare: Yes, NetBeans 6.1 added Groovy and Grails support. I just blogged about it yesterday: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/bleonard/archive/2008/01/hello_grails_1.html
[10:54] Seiichi Wisent: ok, thanks for the link :)
[10:54] Roumen Short: Note that the Groovy features will improve before 6.1 final - it's the first milestone what's available right now
[10:54] DavidB Schism: As JavaFX matures, the NetBeans plugins for supporting the technology will get better
[10:54] Roumen Short: The ultimate goal for Groovy is to have them as good as Ruby support
[10:54] You: Androgyne, go ahead
[10:55] Seiichi Wisent: it is a wonderful news indeed
[10:55] AndroGyne Qinan: Is there a handy way to use netbeans to integrate in world LSL and out world Java
[10:57] Whoops Babii: maybe I could take a stab.
[10:57] Chriistopher Carter: yes
[10:57] You: go ahead whoops!
[10:57] Evil Flare: Yes, you could Generic Languages Framework to start adding support for LSL (http://languages.netbeans.org/)
[10:58] Whoops Babii: The lindens are also doing a lot with Mono.
[10:58] AndroGyne Qinan: Mono is microsoft :-)
[10:58] Evil Flare: Boo!
[10:58] Roumen Short: Mono? That's so evil...
[10:58] Whoops Babii: in other words, someone needs to develop a plug-in for LSL
[10:58] Seiichi Wisent: Mono is Novell actually ;)
[10:58] AndroGyne Qinan: okay true
[10:58] Roumen Short: Novell AND Microsoft, sorry I couldn't help :)
[10:58] Whoops Babii: they just released a code drop for viewer and grid-bease mono changes
[10:58] Evil Flare: Yes, but it's an implementation of MS technology.
[10:59] Evil Flare: That competes with JavaEE
[10:59] Whoops Babii: based* sorrt, I wanted to say beast :)
[10:59] Seiichi Wisent: competes with JSE too
[10:59] You: Okay folks, we are coming up on the hour.
[10:59] Seiichi Wisent: but to no avail
[10:59] You: Are there any last questions for Brian or David?
[11:00] AndroGyne Qinan: is there a continue is thsi kind of meetings
[11:00] You: Yes!
[11:00] Seiichi Wisent: how often?
[11:01] You: Next month we will have a developer chat each week begining 2/14
[11:01] You: And I will try and get these guys back in very soon.
[11:01] You: PLease join our software developer group for more information
[11:01] EUexpat Lockjaw: any email reminder systems?
[11:01] Mihai Alter: It would be nice to add other sessions like tutorials or other targeted things (like about JRuby, etc.)
[11:01] DavidB Schism: Also Brian and I did an "Ask the Experts" that has lots of good material
[11:02] DavidB Schism: http://java.sun.com/developer/community/askxprt/2007/jl1022.html
[11:02] You: Yes, if you are a member of Sun's Software Developer Group in SL you will ge the annoucements
[11:02] You: also, check out my blog: http://blogs.sun.com/sdnblog
[11:02] AndroGyne Qinan: where to join thatgroup
[11:02] You: for more information
[11:02] You: Go to Groups
[11:02] You: Search Software Developers
[11:02] You: we should pop up
[11:03] You: I want to thank Brian and David for their time today
[11:03] You: and thank all of you for atteneding
[11:03] Whoops Babii: Thanks folks!
[11:03] Muslima Questi: thanks a lot!!

See y'all next time!