Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

At the end of the NetBeans Help System Plug-in Tutorial, you end up with your own plug-in's helpset integrated in the IDE's helpset. But what if you don't want that? Especially when the helpset describes a rich client application, rather than a plug-in, there's no need for the IDE's helpset. In fact, you don't just not need the IDE's helpset, but you don't want it. So you need to hide the IDE's helpset (and, since the IDE's helpset consists of 9 sub-helpsets, all of them excep...

So, here's the tutorial that I said I was working on (see Part 1). It's not 100% complete, but almost (probably about 90%). It shows how to add a new category to the Basic Options view (a.k.a. the Modern view) of the Options window—either in the Miscellaneous panel or in a new panel of your own: NetBeans Options Window Extension Module Tutorial Of course, complete source code is provided (via a download link in the tutorial). So, you could download the source code and...

I'm obviously an idiot because only yesterday I realized how easy it is to install NetBeans API Javadoc in the IDE. It's as simple as going to the Update Center and selecting 'API Documentation': It might take you a while to download the API Documentation module: But then working with the APIs is much easier (notice how the Javadoc even includes info about the entries required in the layer.xml file): By the way, if you download the netbeans-5_0-beta-src-ide_sources.zip from here...

There's quite a long list of plug-in module tutorials that are scheduled to be done by the time NetBeans IDE 5.0 is released. One of them—the first draft should be done halfway through next week, right after the first draft of the Copy Class Refactoring Module Tutorial that I mentioned a few days ago— will describe how to extend the redesigned Options window. This you can do in one of two ways—either you add a new category to the Miscellaneous section (click the pic on the...

Matisse is the code name for the project of making Java GUI design with NetBeans an easy and intuitive task. A side effect of this project was the creation of a new layout manager called GroupLayout. It makes the otherwise complex world of GUI development a piece of cake. It is a work of art, hence the name. Inside the IDE, the layout manager is called 'Free Design'. This is how you select it (click to enlarge): That's it. (By the way, I just received a comment from...

NetBeans IDE 5.0 will include several new refactorings. Roumen's WebLog is brimming over with detailed stories about them. However, what if you find that something's missing? Do you submit an issue in Issuezilla and then wait patiently for something to be added to the Update Center? Sometimes you might even have to wait until the next release. Forget patience! Why not try and make your new refactoring yourself? (And, if it works, contribute it back to NetBeans!) However, you...

The secret of syntax highlighting in NetBeans IDE is... no longer a secret. It's all explained here: NetBeans Manifest File Syntax Highlighting Module Tutorial Source code is included—your Manifest files will never be the same again. Of course, the sample and the tutorial are both first drafts, so any feedback would be very welcome indeed.

There's more. More than one kind of syntax highlighting. Typically, you would implement it for a syntax that the IDE doesn't support by default, such as the manifest file syntax shown in yesterday's blog entry. However, how about this scenario—typing regular expressions can be not much fun. How about some syntax highlighting to help you? Here you see a Regular Expression Tester (made by my NetBeans colleague Martin Adamek) with syntax highlighting for typing in the regular...

This is what your manifest files look like: But check out mine: Syntax highlighting rocks. The tutorial that explains everything you'll ever want to know about syntax highlighting—including the complete source code for manifest file syntax highlighting—will be available in the next few days. (Check out this blog entry from some time ago to get a basic idea of part of what's going on.) Many thanks to Andrei Badea for inspiration and support!