Sun Microsystems, Inc and the NetBeans community announced the availability of the award-winning NetBeans 6.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE). NetBeans 6.0 IDE extends support beyond Java by providing a rich set of features for C/C++, JavaScript and the Ruby language, including Ruby on Rails - further enhancing developer productivity with multiple languages and ease of use.

"The release of 6.0 is the culmination of NetBeans momentum in the IDE marketplace," said Jeet Kaul, vice president of Developer Products and Programs at Sun. "While innovation drives interest and excitement in the developer community, collaboration with and use by key industry players drives adoption. And we are happy to have Ikivo AB, JasperSoft Corporation, Nokia Corporation and Wipro Technologies working with the NetBeans community."

The NetBeans 6.0 release marks a monumental milestone, with the following highlights:

• Enhanced code editor with smarter code completion, occurrence highlighting, in place renaming and improved navigation and inspection
  
• Next generation Swing GUI Builder (formerly known as Project Matisse) with Swing Application Framework and Beans Binding technology
  
• Improved visual tools for developing web applications, web services, mobile applications and UML models
  
• Extensive edit/refactor/debug test/deploy functionality for Ruby and Ruby on Rails development
  
• New file navigation functionality for C/C++ developers with improved debugger integration
  
• Comprehensive support for Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 development

NetBeans 6.0 features previously available from add-on packs such as the Visual Web and Enterprise Packs, have been integrated into NetBeans and are delivered via a single install program. This new install program allows for easy customization and installation. In conjunction with the NetBeans release, Sun Java Studio Enterprise and Sun Java Studio Creator have launched migration programs to enable their users to migrate to NetBeans and use the functionality that has been incorporated there.

"As the largest and longest running mobile developer community with more than 3.4 million members, Forum Nokia is continually focused on highlighting best-of-breed productivity tools for our developer community. We are glad to endorse NetBeans 6.0 as a MIDP2 productivity tool that enables developers to bring out the best features of JSR-248 on Nokia devices and thereby addressing several hundred million Nokia device owners," said Lee Epting, vice president, Forum Nokia, Nokia Corporation.

Sun also offers a tiered set of developer support services for its software offerings, ranging from single incident to comprehensive developer plans. In addition, with a broad portfolio of training and certification offerings, developers can enhance their skill sets to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies. To learn more, please visit http://www.netbeans.org/kb/support.html.

The NetBeans Partner Program recognizes the strength that partners bring to the overall NetBeans value proposition as well as the value in reaching one of the largest and pre-eminent communities of software developers in the world.

"We are very excited to engage on a strategic level with Sun and the NetBeans community to help bring advanced rich media content to NetBeans mobility developers specifically and the Java community in general," said Magnus Zetterberg, vice president of Business Development, Ikivo. "The NetBeans development community can now fully employ the power of Scalable Vector Graphics to facilitate the creation of standards based rich media content on the Java ME platform."

"As the market leader in open source business intelligence, we recognize the value of the open source NetBeans community," said Jose Morales, vice president of Business Development for JasperSoft. "Our participation with the collaborative NetBeans community is complementary to both NetBeans and JasperSoft technology. By providing iReport as a native NetBeans plugin, developers from the NetBeans community can now enjoy the benefits of developing Java applications with built-in business intelligence."

Wipro Technologies  joined the NetBeans Strategic Partner Program. "As a global service delivery provider, one of our primary endeavours is to empower our developers to be productive. We see the new NetBeans 6.0 release as a key enabler of increasing our developer productivity. Now as a NetBeans Strategic Partner, we are well positioned to not just leverage the vastly improved and new and innovative features of NetBeans 6.0, but also work with the NetBeans community to contribute and channel our expertise in the developer community as a whole," said Rajesh Ram Mishra, vice president and chief technology officer, Telecom and Product Engineering Solutions, Wipro Technologies.

Developers making the switch to NetBeans

The NetBeans community has experienced tremendous growth, to date there have been more than 16 million downloads and a 300 percent increase in email list subscribers during the past three years. Many developers are migrating to NetBeans from other IDEs. 

Kaul continues, "Developers are the heart and soul of the IT industry. At Sun we are committed to Free and Open Source software, and it gives me great pleasure to say that NetBeans.org is part of Sun's multi-year sponsorship of a developer program called the Open Source Community Innovation Awards. We believe the program will promote creativity from individuals and teams, and recognize the contributions from some of the brightest minds in the industry."