Friday August 18, 2006 Seapegasus Blog
Friday August 18, 2006 Crash-test New Packs and Trails
New packs and...
A few days ago, a user went through a Java EE tutorial and asked us where he could find the Enterprise Pack to go with it. In case you are looking for it too, here's the URL: Updated NetBeans C/C++ Pack and Enterprise Pack Now Available. I also uploaded the first FAQ entries for this pack containing replies to questions posted by fellow developers on IssueZilla.
If you tried the Enterprise Pack tutorials or the updated C/C++ Pack, please tell us what you think! If you feel the Enterprise pack is for you, why not join the NetCAT feedback programm. We are still in beta and you can still tell us what you need. Recently somebody asked, for example, how he could more easily create UML diagrams of nested packages, and he learned that someone's actually already working on that.
... new Learning Trails?
But what I personally was looking forward to most are our new learning trails. I mentioned our redesign efforts before, and the learning trails in the docs&support section are one of the first enhancements.
What are they? For example, take a look at the GUI building learning trail. It's a list of all tutorials and flash demos that we recommend if you want to learn how to create Java Swing GUIs with NetBeans (Matisse). Like all learning trails, the content is sorted from very general introductory material to very specific and advanced tutorials, so you can easily see where on the trail of progress you are, and where you go next.
Or look at the bottom of each trail -- for example the Java Mobility trail: You get pointers to further support options offered by professionals as well as the NetBeans community; and you also can find links to free resources (like blogs) and paid training opportunities. We will add more of those over time, so check back now and then if you are interested.
If you are just starting with Java, then probably the basic Java trail is the perfect thing for you. It shows you how to edit, build, compile, and debug you Java code -- all you need to know to get started. Some editor feature demos come as Flash demos, so you can really see the workflow in action, pretty cool. Of course you can beta-test the learning trails too. Send us feedback: Do you think they are clear and easy to follow, do they answer all your questions?
One more tip if English is not your native language: Keep an eye and the language menu in the top right corner when reading a tutorial: Click to see in which languages this tutorial is available. Recently, Spanish community members asked me for Spanish tutorials, where are they? That's how you find them: You click site map (at the bottom of each nb.org page) and you'll see that over a dozen tutorials plus a dozen more community pages were already translated to Spanish. (That's just one example, there are lots of other languages too.) Also, the Spanish speaking community started collecting NetBeans-related blog entries and articles in Spanish! Pretty impressive. You want your article to be on that list too? Or you want a page like that for your language? No prob, send us the URLs to the most popular articles and we set up a page on netbeans.org for you!
Posted by seapegasus ( Aug 18 2006, 03:50:30 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [1]
