JavaScript
The JavaScript support in NetBeans has been rewritten. Although NetBeans has allowed you to create and edit JavaScript files for a long time, you now get code completion, dynamic type analysis, and online documentation access.
For code completion, simply add your JavaScript library to your application. If you create a web application, you might put JavaScript files in a scripts subdirectory. For example, if you want to use the Scriptaculous libraries, copy them into a subdirectory as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Add JavaScript libraries to your web applications by simply copying them into a project folder.
After adding the JavaScript files to your project, code completion automatically works as you type. For example, as you type the Scriptaculous Effect class name, a popup list appears showing possible completions. Figure 2 shows code completion working to make you more productive in your JavaScript files.
Figure 2. The IDE provides code completion for all JavaScript code that it finds within a project.
Although you can rename variables, sophisticated refactoring isn't yet available. However, you should expect this to improve, and the NetBeans engineering team plans to make JavaScript refactoring comparable to the functionality level it provides for the Ruby language.
Performance Boosts
The NetBeans team claims that the IDE improves its startup time by 40% in many situations. NetBeans provides a lot of functionality and modules in its core download. Now, instead of loading all modules at startup, NetBeans loads them as needed. The result is that your primary editing window should appear more quickly from initial startup.
My observations confirm that NetBeans 6.1 does actually load and present the workspace more quickly than NetBeans 6.0, but I think 40% is a best case measurement. Performance measurements are tough to reproduce exactly, so I didn't even try. In the most contrived, artificial case, experiments may duplicate that 40% improvement, but chances are that you won't. Why not? Your measurements probably aren't going to be tightly constrained or fair or even reproducible. So, I decided to evaluate performance without picking a best-case scenario or giving NetBeans 6.1 any preferential treatment. In fact, my evaluation methods put NetBeans 6.1 at a considerable disadvantage in proving its performance boosts.
I stripped my NetBeans 6.0.1 installation to a small but common working set of plug-ins. I used NetBeans 6.1 as it comes configured in its full download. My startup evaluation used a small project, just a dozen or so Java language source files. NetBeans 6.0.1 started, loaded the project, and presented the editor in 22 seconds. NetBeans 6.1 performed the same task in 18 seconds. That's roughly an 18% difference. In real time, that's only 4 seconds, but I noticed. Surprisingly, NetBeans 6.1 still started and opened the project more quickly than version 6.0, despite having a larger set of default plug-ins to load. Your results and impressions will definitely be different, and I expect that the startup time will be more dramatic with larger projects.
NetBeans 6.1 has also reduced its overall memory footprint. My observations, using Windows XP Task Manager, indicate that my stripped down NetBeans 6.0.1 IDE with no active project windows will need about 145 MB. In contrast, NetBeans 6.1 settled into about 140 MB. So, yes, the footprint is measurably smaller, but opinions will definitely differ about whether this amount is significant. Again, depending on what plug-ins you use, you'll see different results, probably more dramatic ones.
New on the Java Boutique:
New Review:
Time Management Made Easy with the Quartz Enterprise Job Scheduler
Why not just use the Java timer API? This open source scheduling
API boasts simplicity, ease-of-integration, a well-rounded feature
set, and it's free!
New Applet:
Reverse Complement
Reverse Complement is a simple applet that converts DNA or RNA
sequences into three useful formats.
Elsewhere on internet.com:
WebDeveloper Java
Lots of Java information on webdeveloper.com
WDVL Java
Thorough Java resource at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
ScriptSearch Java
Hundreds of free Java code files to download.
jGuru: Your View of the Java Universe
Customizable portal with online training, FAQs, regular news updates, and tutorials.
| 
