What's New in NetBeans Platform 6.5?
An overview of changes relating to NetBeans Platform 6.5, which is the Swing framework that underpins applications such as NetBeans IDE.
New & Changed Features
New APIs & SPIs
Read all of the changes here, with new classes as follows:
Deprecations
The following are deprecated/obsolete from 6.5 onwards:
- In org.openide.loaders.DataObject:
- DataObject.getCookie is now DataObject.getLookup().lookup(Object.class)
- In org.openide.nodes:
- Node.getCookie is now Node.getLookup().lookup(Object.class)
- In org.openide.text.Line:
- Line.show
- In org.openide.util:
- Utilities.icon2Image is now ImageUtilities.icon2Image
- Utilities.loadImage is now ImageUtilities.loadImage
- Utilities.mergeImages is now ImageUtilities.mergeImages
New & Changed Tools in NetBeans IDE 6.5
- New Window Component wizard: now no action is created by this wizard. Instead, it is wrapped in the layer file, where new entries are added for this purpose. In addition, there is a new checkbox 'Keep preferred size when slided in', which lets you specify whether your window should support the new feature that gives you control over the slided-out window.
- New File Type wizard: no data loader and no node are created. Instead, these are wrapped in the layer, where they are declared.
- New Action wizard: if you select an 'Always Enabled' action, the wizard will create a standard JDK ActionListener class, instead of a CallableSystemAction. New entries are registered in the layer, which maps your ActionListener to its NetBeans API requirements.
- New Options Window wizard: now you can specify whether your new tab will be a miscellaneous tab within one of your own Options window tabs.
New Video Series
A new series of screencasts is introduced in 6.5, to get you started with gaining a conceptual understanding of the NetBeans Platform. Guided by the screencasts, you will understand the NetBeans Platform's problem domain and you will see the main APIs in action via a series of demonstrations using NetBeans IDE. The current parts of the series are as follows:
- Part 1: Runtime Container
- Part 2: Lookup API
- Part 3: Window System API
- Part 4: System Filesystem API
Note: The topics in this series are also covered in the NetBeans Platform Certified Training.
More coming soon...
New Tutorials
All tutorials at http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/platform.html are updated. In some cases, there are big changes in the texts, because of the above changes in the APIs and in the tools. The following are published for the first time in the 6.5 release cycle:
- NetBeans Platform Runtime Container Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Quick Search Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Code Generator Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Code Completion Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Mark Occurrences Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Code Template Tutorial
- NetBeans Platform Java Hint Tutorial
New Teaching Materials
The NetBeans Platform Certified Training has been delivered to a number of companies and institutions during the 6.5 release cycle and a new page has been created, for ALL the slides ever made by anyone in relation to the NetBeans Platform:
The page is useful to teachers of the NetBeans Platform, i.e., either to people who are giving one-off presentations or to those who are giving full-blown courses covering several days to newbies or advanced users of the NetBeans Platform. If you have slides that should be added to the list, please join & write to nbedu@netbeans.org saying so.