Application: Netbeans 4.1

I've just recently upgraded to the new Netbeans 4.1 as I stated in my last post. It's quite the upgrade from 3.6. The ant based project files are really neat. I'm currently working on upgrading our old build files to work with the new ide, because there's a lot of features in it we want to take advantage of. One of the biggest is the profiler. This feature allows you to see just how your program is performing, and if there are any choke points in your code, you will find them quickly.

Here's a screenshot of the main screen of the IDE:

The project allows you to keep the build separate from the source a lot easier, also with the libraries section it makes it easier to maintain your classpaths. All in all I love this new version I can't wait for some of the expected improvements. One thing about it it's made me learn a lot about Ant and build files. If you need to learn I heartily recommend O'Reilly's Ant The Definitive Guide. You grab it online at Chapters, or Amazon.

The support for web applications has been improved quite a bit too. It sets up the project and builds a war archive that's ready to be deployed. I found testing to be a lot easier within the new IDE.

Next time I'll talk about Kontact, and amazing Personal Information Management system that for me was instrumental in severing the ties from Microsoft software (namely Outlook).