I read a lot of computer books. This is one of the worst I have ever read. While it does contain some good information, it is presented with very little context. That makes it very difficult to absorb. The other issue is that the material has become dated as the NetBeans Platform has been improved. Unfortunately there isn't an alternative to this book now. Maybe there will be in 2009.

This is a book about how Netbeans, the application framework, works. Its intended audience is Netbeans framework users, people interested in frameworks generally and people who want to know how Netbeans works so they can, say, write plugins for it. Netbeans is mostly known for being a Java editor.

So what we have here is a book written about a technology by the people who created that technology. The worry for readers is there will not be enough editorial pushback against the experts to clarify their language; if they say "that's right" about something they wrote, then who is going to argue with them?

Unfortunately, that fear is well founded in this case. For instance, after a lengthy and rather abstract "manifesto" type chapter (chapter 4) on the (uncontroversial) benefits of modular applications and decoupling of abstraction from implementation, they introduce something called Lookup, which is, basically, a little database of keys and values, or, even more roughly, a "magic bag" of keys and values. Leaving aside the issue of whether Lookup is a Good Idea or not, the authors fail utterly in their illustrations of how and why Lookup is used to actually clarify its usage or purpose. The examples meant to clarify Lookup in Chapter 5 fail every test of good writing- they're chock full of references to Netbeans-specific classes and Netbeans-specific idioms that the reader could not possibly understand, unless of course the reader already understood the Netbeans framework, in which case, the chapter itself would presumably be moot. This is exactly the kind of thing a good editor should have caught.

Generally, the good point of this book is its written by the people closest to the technology, and is in that sense authoritative. The bad points are that such people are often terrifically bad at identifying what it is they understand that their readers don't, and crossing that chasm. The overall effect is, the authors sound didactic and overly repetitive, e.g. chapter 4, when they have a philosophical / architectural point they want to argue; they find too many ways to say simple things over and over.

On the other hand, when it comes to explaining the nuts and bolts of Netbeans, while they do give a good broad overview of its "parts", the more exacting task of transmitting clarifying details coherently, such that the reader could say after they've read the passage, "there, all that earlier abstract talk has been made concrete by a clear and forceful example, and I understand the technology,", well, that's the hard part of writing a book, and there they fail quite miserably.

Its get a star for its topic and another for its timeliness.

This is a book about how Netbeans, the application framework, works. Its intended audience is Netbeans framework users, people interested in frameworks generally and people who want to know how Netbeans works so they can, say, write plugins for it. Netbeans is mostly known for being a Java editor.

So what we have here is a book written about a technology by the people who created that technology. The worry for readers is there will not be enough editorial pushback against the experts to clarify their language; if they say "that's right", then who is going to argue with them?

Unfortunately, that fear is well founded in this case. For instance, after a lengthy and rather abstract "manifesto" type chapter (chapter 4) on the (uncontroversial) benefits of modular applications and decoupling of abstraction from implementation, they introduce something called Lookup, which is, basically, a little database of keys and values, our even more roughly, a "magic bag" of keys and values. Leaving aside the issue of whether Lookup is a Good Idea or not, the authors fail utterly in their illustrations of how and why Lookup is used to clarify its usage or purpose. The examples meant to clarify and justify its usage in Chapter 5 fail every test of good writing- they're chock full of references to Netbeans-specific classes and Netbeans-specific idioms that the reader could not possibly understand, unless of course the reader already understood the Netbeans framework, in which case, the chapter itself would presumable be moot. This is exactly the kind of thing a good editor should have caught.

Generally, the good point of this book is its written by the people closest to the technology, and is in that sense authoritative. The bad points are that such people are often terrifically bad at identifying what it is they understand that their readers don't, and crossing that chasm. The effect is,the authors sound didactic and overly repetitive, e.g. chapter 4, when they have a philosophical / architectural point they want to argue; they find too many ways to say simple things over and over.

When it comes to explaining the nuts and bolts of Netbeans, while they do give a good broad overview of its "parts" when it comes to the more exacting task of transmitting clarifying details coherently, such that the reader could say after they've read the passage, "there, all that earlier abstract talk has been made concrete by a clear and forceful example, and I understand the technology,", well, that's the hard part of writing a book and here they fail quite miserably.

Its get a star for its topic and another for its timeliness.

Tim Boudreau, Jaroslav Tulach, and Geertjan Wielenga's RICH CLIENT PROGRAMMING: PLUGGING INTO THE NETBEANS PLATFORM covers the open-source NetBeans Platform, which can be used to build rich client applications - and it's the first guide for NetBeans IDE 5.0, so no serious Java programming collection should be without it. Java developers receive a guide to advanced NetBeans module development, using proven real-world ideas for building reliable desktop software.

Tim Boudreau, Jaroslav Tulach, and Geertjan Wielenga's RICH CLIENT PROGRAMMING: PLUGGING INTO THE NETBEANS PLATFORM covers the open-source NetBeans Platform, which can be used to build rich client applications - and it's the first guide for NetBeans IDE 5.0, so no serious Java programming collection should be without it. Java developers receive a guide to advanced NetBeans module development, using proven real-world ideas for building reliable desktop software.

Java comes with a nice set of Swing widgets, that are generally easy to program. But sometimes extensive graphics coding in Swing leads you to find limitations in this default package, extensive though it is. What this book discusses is the next step. Using another large library built atop Swing. NetBeans.

There are several APIs that come with NetBeans. Along with classes that instantiate those APIs. The overall approach is to make things readily extensible and replaceable by you. Sometimes, this might be to have a loosely coupled system. Where different groups can contribute code for new modules, without having to rewrite the currently existing modules.

Of the NetBeans graphics classes, one immediate benefit is improved GUI layout management. The default layout managers that come with Swing are either limited or very awkward to use. NetBeans has a GUI builder that is as elegant as anything Microsoft has put out for its applications. (Some NetBeans fans would surely claim this NetBeans builder is much better.) A chapter on this builder has screen shots showing how you can drag and drop widgets to make any form based on Swing. Very intuitive to learn. And when you've stabilised on a form, the builder spits out a Java file that makes the form.

It should also be said that NetBeans is not restricted to graphics-type classes. Though perhaps these might be the ones that attract the most attention from some developers. In a broader context, the book also shows classes that let you get at the filesystem, where you can decouple to a large extent from the specifics of different filesystems.