While evaluating ICEfaces I have used Eclipse and its Web Page Editor to visually create a webpage using ICEfaces components. I have heard that Netbeans 6.5 provided a similar capability, but Netbeans 6.7 does not support a visual drag and drop. I was wondering if there is a plugin for Netbeans to enable this? Also to those who have experience with ICEfaces, what IDE do you prefer and why?
A:
I was wondering if there is a plugin for Netbeans to enable this?
Netbeans used to ship previously with the terrible Woodstock component library (which fortunately died January this year due to serious problems in decent webbrowsers) and the appropriate visual editor with a "component palette". Since it died, the users were suggested to migrate to ICEFaces. Tools were provided to convert existing Woodstock projects to ICEFaces projects (although I've read here and there you can better convert/code it by hand yourself).
I was wondering if there is a plugin for Netbeans to enable this?
At their Tools Support section I see plugins/tools for both Eclipse and Netbeans.
Also to those who have experience with ICEfaces, what IDE do you prefer and why?
I don't have hands on experience with ICEFaces, but I have hands on experience with Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. Both are excellent IDE's to program in. I've tried Netbeans for web developemt some years ago. But it bugged and didn't do what I asked/expected it to do, so I threw it away. Since then I've never touched it, but it may be improved lately. Just try both yourself and conclude yourself. Own experience is always the best answer on those kind of subjective matters.
Note that I do not recommend dragging'n'dropping code. They may eventually speed up development, but you will end up swimming disoriented around in code soup while you're about to maintain/bugfix/enhance/reuse the code.
BalusC
2009-11-30 14:10:24