Years ago I was all over Eclipse. I used it every day and loved it. I was introduced to NetBeans when I wrote an article comparing the two, but continued to use Eclipse out of familiarity. But when I joined Sun in 2006, I was exposed to it more and more and fell in love with it. It was my IDE of choice for years.

I still use Eclipse for some of my consulting work, but I prefer NetBeans when I have a choice. It looks like Oracle is growing fond of it also. Their plans for NetBeans 7.0, which is available as a beta, is chock full of new features, most of which center around deep integration with Oracle products and JDK7.

The NetBeans IDE 7.0 Beta features language support for the JDK 7 platform; enhanced integration with Oracle WebLogic server; support for Oracle Database, GlassFish 3.1, Maven 3, HTML5 editing; and more.

I'm quite interested in the HTML5 editing features. And with a planned release in early 2011, I can only hope there will be a bundle available with the new JavaFX 2.0 as discussed at JavaOne this year. That would be the bow on top.

Happy coding! -EJB