Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

Today we'll combine the last two blog entries so that we can diff two databases and present the result visually to the user. The assumption is that you've followed everything described yesterday and that everything is up and running successfully. As a first next step, follow the blog entry from the day before that to set up your Maven-based NetBeans Platform application correctly for working with the Diff API. I.e., set the dependencies described in that blog entry, but don't...

If you follow the NetBeans Project Type Tutorial, you'll end up with a new NetBeans Platform project type that will treat as a project any folder that has a subfolder named "texts". Let's now assume that we'd like each project in our application to represent a database, instead of a folder of documents. Very simple to do this, just follow the tutorial exactly as described (go here for the Maven version of that tutorial) and then replace "texts" with ".derby" or whatever the...

There are many reasons why you might want a diff window in your desktop application. Maybe you have files that need to be diffed, maybe you want to compare databases to each other, etc. Fortunately, the NetBeans Platform provides an out of the box Diff Window, together with programmatic access to it via the NetBeans Diff API. Since we're using Maven, the trickiest part is setting up the dependencies correctly. Once that's done, we have a lot of functionality out of the box....

Let's create a Maven based NetBeans Platform app that uses the Nimbus look and feel. Here's how you'd do so for an Ant based application. Start by putting the highlighted elements below in the POM of the application module: <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>nbm-maven-plugin</artifactId><configuration> <etcConfFile>src/main/resources/my.conf</etcConfFile> </configuration> ...

You have multiple windows displayed in a single mode. How do you specify the order in which the windows are displayed? See below. <folder name="Windows2"> <folder name="Components"> <file name="Details1TopComponent.settings" url="Details1TopComponentSettings.xml"/> </folder> <folder name="Modes"> <folder name="editor"> <file name="Details1TopComponent.wstcref" url="Details1TopComponentWstcref.xml"><attr name="position" intvalue="100"/> ...

Click here to see & hear Jaroslav Tulach talk about the history of NetBeans! After that, Toni Epple does his "No Slides, Just Code" talk. The movie is made available by SkillsMatter in London, where the three of us were a few weeks ago: Enjoy the movie!

When I titled the article around Allan Gregersen's Javeleon "Update Space Invaders Game While Playing It", I was being slightly frivolous. The point of Javeleon isn't to update a space invaders game while playing it, of course. Instead, the point is, more generically, to reload features while keeping their state. But, in the comments to that article, Antonio Vieiro and Dominique De Vito pointed to their 'need' for such games being made available (Antonio because he'd like to...

The team that did the training at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen in April this year sent some screenshots today, to show part of the progress they've made with the NetBeans Platform. In addition to the NetBeans Platform training, the team also followed a training from Geomatys in Geotoolkit and PuzzleGIS. Below, in the screenshots, you see the integration of maps with the other dialogs in the NetBeans Platform application. Several general Swing widgets have been...

UNESCO's work with the NetBeans RCP is well documented. I've been in touch with that project's manager, Jean-Claude Dauphin, for some time. He's been eagerly waiting for JWebPane (also because JDIC failed to work solidly for him, not at all for some operating systems). So he was very happy with Josch's NetBeans RCP/DJ Native Swing Integration. He followed the instructions, extending the sample to cater for Windows 32-bit and sent me the screenshot below to prove his success: I'...