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Tutorials for Swing Applications Built on top the NetBeans Platform
Once you are familiar with the basics of
building NetBeans modules and rich-client applications, having followed the
two tutorials in the previous section, and you are specifically interested in
creating rich-client applications, you are encouraged to follow the next tutorials. The first, by NetBeans founding member Jaroslav Tulach,
demonstrates the concept of assembling an application out of modules
selected from the IDE. The second,
by regular contributor Rich Unger, is a full blown FeedReader application, available both
in PDF format and in HTML. The third tutorial was written by a collection of
NetBeans engineers, to explain how to make use of the Java EE 5 specification within
the context of an application based on the NetBeans Platform.
It is a good idea to work through these tutorials in the
order listed here:
NetBeans APIs for Developing or Extending an Editor
To work with a new file type, the IDE (or your own application) must know what it is.
Once it knows what it is, you can provide functionality specifically tailored towards
the file type. For example, you can provide specific actions, syntax coloring, code
snippets, indentation engines, palettes, and drag-and-drop functionality. All these issues are dealt with in the
tutorials in this section. The following tutorials do not build on top of each other; you
can start with any of them. If you want an end-to-end story, see the "NetBeans POV-Ray Tutorial"
further down below.
NetBeans POV-Ray Tutorial
Tim Boudreau's POV-Ray tutorial demonstrates integrating basic support
for a new language, and writing a project type for creating
projects specific to that language. Even if you are not planning to do those
exact things, it will familiarize you with a lot of NetBeans concepts
that will be useful in writing any module.
Bundling Supporting Resources
The following tutorials do not require you to know anything about the NetBeans APIs involved.
In some cases (such as project templates), the tutorial describes a wizard that
installs an application as a new sample in the New Project wizard. Here, no knowledge
of the related NetBeans APIs is needed. In other cases (such as the article on autoupdate
descriptors), you are shown how to make your applications and NetBeans modules available
to others.
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New! NetBeans IDE 6.0 Beta Tutorials
NetBeans APIs for Making Selections
Selection is used to make possible such things as context sensitive actions
(actions that are enabled or disabled depending on what is displayed), and
palette windows such as the Property Sheet or Navigator components in the IDE,
which each display some aspect of whatever is selected. This sequential series
of tutorials by Tim Boudreau delves into these aspects of the NetBeans APIs,
using common scenarios and a lot of illustrative sample code. Each tutorial builds
on the previous one, you are therefore recommended to begin with the first below
and continue from there.
Miscellaneous NetBeans APIs
The NetBeans APIs discussed in the following tutorials do not directly
relate to the subjects covered in the above sections. For example, the first shows how to add a JTextField
as a button in the toolbar, while the second shows how to integrate a third party
library for checking your GMail account. The third tutorial shows how to extend the Runtime
window via the Nodes API. The last tutorial in this section shows you how to create a server-agnostic
basis on top of which you can build a server-specific support module for the IDE.
Legacy Tutorials for NetBeans IDE 4.1
Even though the following three documents are in the "legacy" category, they
are well worth reading—they are by two external contributors, Tom Wheeler
and Sandip Chitale—and give a very practical, detailed introduction to
the NetBeans Platform, the NetBeans APIs, and module development in general.
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