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NetBeans Mobility 6.1 - my NetBeans RoadShow story

jack44 | 17 April, 2008 13:45

Some time ago I promised to write small review about NetBeans Mobility. Last week, I attended NetBeans RoadShow 07-08 conference in Warsaw, Poland. Of course, I was mainly interested in sessions related to mobility and new NetBeans features. I had an unique opportunity to ask Sun's software engineer about future of Java ME and NetBeans Platform. In the case of Java ME, final MIDP 3.0 specification should be ready later this year and Java ME is also part of Java FX Mobile (a mobile phone running JavaFX APIs will also be able to run Java ME applications), so "I shouldn't worry that I'll have to change a job". In the case of NetBeans Mobility, the future looks also bright - future versions will support MIDP 3.0, JavaFX Mobile, more device platforms, more components and visual data binding.

Let's look into NetBeans in version 6.1 (RC1). It may be considered as development IDE for Java ME and widgets (!). Generally, it starts a lot faster than previous versions and has smarter code completion (including Javadoc).

J2ME:
In addition to NB Mobility 6.0 features, it has even better support for SVG. Thanks to SVG, there're two developing roles in the project: graphical designers create images (menus, etc.), developers add business logic. Creating SVG application is really simple - it's done by using "Microsoft programming method" (you need mouse, mouse pad and your eyes) - almost no programming at all (check FN screencast Getting Started with JSR-226 Applications for S60 Devices that demonstrates the creation of a simple Java ME application using the SVG features of NetBeans Mobility and the example used in the presentation). The "SVG programming" is simplified by visual designer supporting such components as: SVG Menu, SVG Splash Screen, SVG Wait Screen, SVG Image, SVG Player. What's interesting, some components of Visual Mobile Designer are displayed only if your application supports chosen JSR (e.g., if your application doesn't support SVG API, you won't see SVG components). The developers who are interested in developing in NB Mobility may be interested in a screencast that illustrates how to create, edit, package, and deploy a simple Java application.

Widgets:
Although currently there is no plugin for widgets like for Eclipse IDE, it's still possible to write widgets easily. You can use IDE's HTML, CSS and JavaScript editors with an Ant script to make everything automatically. Among "standard JavaScript editor features" like semantic highlighting, marking occurrences, refactoring, tasklist or code completion (of course, not for specific widget APIs), there's one more worth mentioning - Quick Fixes and Semantic Checks. The IDE warns the developer when code has no side effects, when using an assignment in a conditional (if x = y) or when code has inconsistent returns from a function (where some return expressions return a value, and some do not).

There's a great (old), but extremely useful feature for people developing in both IDEs - Eclipse and NetBeans. You can have the same keymap (in NetBeans choose Tools -> Options -> Keymap and set to Eclipse), e.g. formatting of source code in both IDEs under Ctrl+Shift+F (normally Alt+Shift+F in NetBeans, where Ctrl+Shift+F means Find in projects option). This's the first option I set, after deactivating all not used modules/plugins.

However, there're many things that can be done to enhance the NetBeans Mobility IDE 6.1:

word "Mobility" for Sun means 'mobile Java' - why there's no support for developing WAP (WML, WMLScript, XHTML MP)? Since the IDE supports HTML, XML, JavaScript it wouldn't be a problem to add such support and make the IDE more "Mobility edition",
mobile widgets support would be a plus,
new components like: MMS composer/editor, tabs component, lbs - show your current position component (that will hide the complexity of implementing it on many devices - location API / bluetooth API + NMEA), lbs - show your position on map (Google/Yahoo) component...