Where to migrate existing Visual Web Project in Netbeans to?

Question

We currently maintain a JSF application developed using Netbeans 5.5.1 using the Visual Web Designer. Our environment is forcing us to stop using Netbeans 5.5.1 and we now have to find another tool to develop our application in.

The problem is that migrating to Netbeans 6.7 we will lose the Visual Web Designer we have grown so accustomed to when working on our application. Netbeans suggest moving to IceFaces, but there will still be no Visual Web Designer and will be all text based. See here.

We tried the backwards compatibility plug-in for Visual Web Designer projects. Unfortunately many components and custom javascript used in the application still does not work.

So we are going to have to do a lot of work no matter what direction we go. So my question is, what is the recommended tool set used for developing/maintaining a JSF application? Should we stick with Netbeans, is Eclipse better for this, is there something else I have not considered?

Answer 1

In addition to Netbeans and Eclipse, there's IntelliJ (though that doesn't have a visual component) and JDeveloper from Oracle.

Can't recommend JDeveloper especially, as I haven't used it (visual development isn't something I like), but it's free, and the demos that I've seen (on the referenced page) make it look like something that may fit your needs better than Eclipse.

Answer 2

Please post your decision here, I have the same question

Answer 3

After looking into all our options we decided to upgrade to Netbeans 6.5 and start migrating the project IceFaces. With IceFaces you can have a project that has both IceFaces and Woodstock screens. So we can upgrade one screen at a time and not have to do everything at once. Once they are all changed over, we will clean up and remove the Woostock stuff. Then once it is a pure Icefaces project we can swap development environments if we want to at that time.

It was the best solution we could find to both upgrade our IDE and keep the a visual designer. IF you find something better be sure to post it here also, as we are always looking for a better solution.