Ajax-ready Environment

NetBeans IDE comes with your choice of GlassFish or Tomcat installed, as well as the Java DB database server. You can easily integrate other tools, like the JBoss application server and MySQL database server

Editor Support for JavaScript, CSS, and PHP 

Take advantage of full syntax highlighting, code completion, and error checking for JavaScript, CSS and PHP. The Editor recognizes JavaScript code in stand-alone JavaScript files as well as in HTML, RHTML, and JSP files. The visual CSS editor allows you to edit CSS rules and preview the results.

Visual Editor for Ajax-enabled JSF Applications

Built into the NetBeans Visual JSF framework is a collection of Java Server Faces-based, Ajax-enabled user interface components from Project Woodstock. Using these components, you can build consistent, accessible and dynamic web pages. Project Woodstock components are free and open-source.

Using an Ajax-enabled component is like working with any other component in the IDE: Drag and drop the component, set properties, and customize server-side event handlers. This dynamic Ajax behavior is implemented via Project Dynamic Faces (DynaFaces).

Ajax Framework and Toolkit Integration

The JavaScript editor provides code completion and integrated documentation for popular Ajax frameworks such as Dojo, Yahoo, flickr, jQuery, scriptaculous, prototype, etc. Download your favorite Ajax framework and copy its files into your project, and the editor will automatically recognize them.

jMaki Support

The jMaki Plug-in contains a palette of widgets from a number of popular frameworks that you can drop into any web page. Add functionality from Dojo, Yahoo, flickr, and other frameworks to your web application and configure the widgets on-the-fly using graphical customizers.

You can use jMaki widgets in just about any type of web application, from Ruby on Rails to JSF 1.2-based visually-designed web applications.

Google Web Toolkit Integration

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) Plug-in lets you quickly add GWT libraries to your web application, generate and maintain GWT classes and controller files, and integrate GWT services into your application. Install the GWT Starter Kit to add GWT sample applications to the New Project dialog.

Databases 

The Database Explorer works with JavaDB (Derby), MySQL and PostgreSQL out of the box. The Explorer supports any relational database for which there is a JDBC driver, including Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, PointBase, Sybase, Informix, Cloudscape, InstantDB, Interbase, Firebird, FirstSQL, Mckoi SQL, HSQLDB, Hypersonic SQL, Micrososft Access.

 Web Application Learning Trail