Netbeans: The Definitive Guide

This is mostly a well-written, dense, book about a very complex subject. I learn something new each time I pick up the book meaning this is a book that you will want to keep nearby.Many of the reviewers lamented the second half of the book about creating your own plug-in. Since that was the sole purpose for me to obtain the book, I welcomed the wealth of information. I was also impressed that it covered branding, which is precisely the information I was looking for. In a the short time it took for me to read a few chapters, I had written, branded, and packaged the initial skeleton of the application I'm building on top of the NetBeans platform.The organization of the opening Concepts and Paradigms chapter baffled me. It's also a tutorial and user guide and overview. The section didn't flow together very well unlike the more focused chapters that came later.The only major complaint I would have is that many of the examples and code didn't work in my version (3.6). But that can't be blamed on the book which was based upon version 3.3. The solution was usually easily found. The O'Reilly errata pages also provided some fixes. I expect everything else will be cleared up by the NetBeans community on their fairly active mailing lists.I also found the chapter on creating beans to be a bit light on motivation. Why would I want to create a bean? What is a bean and how do the steps presented create a bean? How would the bean be used?I would have also liked to have seen how to make the editor use Emacs keybindings. While that capability does not exist in the product at present, I'm sure there are enough people who want that capability that it would have been useful to describe a workaround in the book.I caught nearly a half dozen typographical and grammatical errors and one error in an example. More than I'd expect from O'Reilly. Since NetBeans is evolving so quickly, I'd encourage O'Reilly to come out with editions that cover 3.6 and the upcoming 4.0.No matter, if you're going to use NetBeans, you have to read this book.

Netbeans is a free full-featured IDE for Java. The original code was developed by Sun and donated to the Netbeans open source community. This book will not teach any Java programming, but will teach you how to use Netbeans to program in Java. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is about using the IDE to write Java code for your application. The second part is about writing modules to plug into Netbeans to extend its functionality. The opening chapters cover features available to most IDEs, including debugging and using the GUI building functionality of Netbeans. The chapter on CVS was helpful in setting a CVS client with Netbeans, but it only gives a high-level overview of CVS, not enough to learn CVS with this book alone. The GUI building chapter is a very good tutorial on how to build GUI forms inside of Netbeans. The sections on the code generation properties and adding event handlers are well written and easy to follow and should be easy to incorporate into your own projects.The second part of the book covers consists of how to create custom modules using the Netbeans API. The examples are well written and comprehensive. If a programmer were going to write a custom module, these chapters would be very helpful, but most users of Netbeans are not going to write custom modules, so he or she could skip the last part of the book.This book is really two books in one, one is about using Netbeans and the other is about extending Netbeans using the Netbeans API. The book has excellent examples and is a good tutorial, but the second part is probably excessive for most users.

I agree with the other reviewers: this is an outstanding book and a must-have for anyone who is serious about programming in Java using the NetBeans IDE. However, it is not a book that will teach you the Java programming language, nor is it a book that will in any way extend your Java programming abilities into such areas as Java Beans, Servlets, or JSPs. The first ten chapters are really the core how-to. These cover 1) Installation, 2) Basic Concepts, 3) The Source Editor, 4) Debugging, 5) Compiling, 6) Customizing the IDE, 7) Using CVS, 8) GUI Building, 9) JavaBeans, 10) JavaDoc. Beyond that, there are two other chapters devoted to working with XML, JSPs, and Servlets. These chapters are meant to show programmers already comfortable with these technologies how to utilize NetBeans for implementing them; they are NOT for learning the technologies themselves. The rest of the book is quite advanced, and I'll admit that as an intermediate-level programmer I haven't been able to benefit from it. It consists of detailed analyses of how to create custom NetBeans modules, how to tune the existing modules for performance, etc. For those of us who are still grappling with the enormous amount of study necessary in order to build a functional Java program, this book represents a good investment. But you will probably only use the first 200 pages, about 1/3 of the total book. So you must ask yourself, "Does the cost of this book justify the 200 pages I will probably only ever use?" The answer to that question is Yes, if you are truly serious about programming in Java. This NetBeans IDE is truly awesome, and it is a godsend for those of us who have struggled to code in Notepad or something equally as [bad]. For those of us who are not really serious but merely casual programmers, I would say, No -- there are much better ways to invest your time and money.

NETBEANS: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE is a well-organized book, whose informative chapters gave a good account of NetBeans Integrated Development Environment. With additional information for developers whose experience on open source development projects is marginal, this book benefits programmers who employ Java in software creation. Its expertly divulged details include a ramified analysis of NetBeans IDE vis-a-vis Borland's JBuilder.The provided samples and examples assist readers in practising what they have learnt. This is clearly a definitive guide on Netbeans.

I have been using Netbeans as an amateur Java programmer for a couple of years. Although having understood that Netbeans is more than a traditional IDE, I had never taken the time to find out what that was all about. But that is exactly what the authors of this book sets out to do. The first part is a walktrough of the IDE, and this part is superb in itself. But then comes the even better part - showing us that Netbeans is so much more - basically it is a fully extendible enviroment that can act as your foundation for more or less any application.The text is dense and profound, yet it is clear and extremely well written, it seems that the principle of "deep simplicity" have been followed. There are relatively few figures and pictures, and the authors have avoided sprinkling trivial code examples around. Also, you can fire up Netbeans and follow the examples, so learning by doing as well as reading. Of the 10-20 Java related titles from O'Reilly that I own this one ranks in among top 3. I strongly recomend this book if you are interested in Netbeans.