What is the best IDE for JSP, JSTL and jQuery development

Question

Hey everyone.

Being a Dreamweaver user (with some past flirtations with Aptana), I'm now looking for a windows-based IDE that provides the following features:

Requirements:

• Code completion / hints on JSP / JSTL code (tags mostly)
• Code completion / hints on jQuery code
• Ability to automate repetitive tasks (uploading to remote server, or compiling to run on local server)

Nice to have's:

• Ability to create custom commands (e.g. a command to run an external JS minifier)
• Ability to parse JS code (either current file or referenced file) to display list of functions / variables.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Eclipse

Eclipse with the right plugins and perspectives will do all that. If you take the time to explore all of its free open source offerings and customize it to your needs (automated and custom tasks) you should have a working IDE that suits you.

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Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP): http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/ (see the list of subprojects and the related technologies)

jQueryWTP: http://www.langtags.com/jquerywtp/

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I came from other IDEs to Eclipse simply because lots of plugins and SDKs that I use are being officially released and supported on Eclipse.

IntelliJ

Here is a nice supported features matrix on both community and commercial version.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

Answer 2

IntelliJ is the best IDE there is, hands down. No plugins needed for what you want to do.

Answer 3

This will be of course very controversial since most developers have "religious" bonds to their favorite IDE, but for the requirements you describe, all 3 major IDEs : Eclipse, Netbeans and IntelliJ are very good.

If you are interested however in something more, like: "Smart code completion" (not just dummy code completion), i.e. the IDE to decide what's the most suitable method to complete based on return types, or the best refactorings and more, than indeed, as duffymo already suggested, IntelliJ is the best solution (but of course it's not free for commercial projects - at least not the enterprise features you mention)