Apress and NetBeans power developer/user Adam Myatt proudly announce that Pro NetBeans IDE 5.5 Enterprise Edition has published, and is/will soon be available on Amazon.com as well as other booksellers. As editor of this book, I’ve been asked the question: Why NetBeans?

Well, NetBeans IDE 5.5 is one of the elite, perhaps only, open source agile, lightweight Java IDE that includes buttons, drop-downs, and other functions that let you immediately apply the Java EE 5 platform into your Java application. I don’t think IntelliJ lets you do this. And neither does market share leading Eclipse. Eclipse is an open source IDE that’s still stuck in “heavyweight” J2EE-land, imo. Also, enough intelligence on the Web indicated that Eclipse is losing favor to many Java developers as it’s getting more and more difficult to download, set-up, and configure.

If you want a serious enterprise Java IDE that complies and uses the latest Sun Java EE standards, NetBeans is really it in a pragmatic, realistic way. NetBeans is also much easier to work with than Eclipse. Etc.

Eclipse is still a great IDE platform for desktop Java development and cross-platform (Java with PHP, Ruby/Rails, Python, etc) development. But if you’re just working with Java, you should strongly consider NetBeans as your out of the box solution.

There’s no mistaking… NetBeans is back, and growing up. Look for more great things from the NetBeans.org community in the coming months, including Ruby on Rails/JRuby IDE on NetBeans, NetBeans 6, and much more…

Anyway, NetBeans rebound and growth in last two years convinced me that this was an open source project in need of a current book, focused on NetBeans 5.5 with an emphasis on its Enterprise and Visual Web Packs; hence the use of Enterprise Edition in title of this book. Enjoy.