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There are several well-known and widely used commercial Java IDE tools:
There are also several free or low-cost Java IDE tools that can be considered as good
and cost effective alternatives to the commercial IDEs. They are used by many developers and
are becoming increasingly popular in numerous IT shops. The table presented below includes a short
description of three such products.
| Free and Low-Cost Java IDE Tools
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NetBeans
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NetBeans is an open-source project that consists of two subprojects, the
NetBeans IDE
and the
NetBeans Platform.
The NetBeans IDE allows developers to rapidly develop web, enterprise, desktop,
and mobile applications using the Java platform, as well as PHP, JavaScript,
Ajax, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Groovy, and C/C++. There are numerous plug-ins for
NetBeans available from the
NetBeans Plugin Portal.
The NetBeans Platform is a generic, configurable, feature rich foundation
of a desktop application. It allows developers to focus on building the application logic.
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Eclipse
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Eclipse is an open source software development platform comprising
an Integrated Development Environment and a plug-in system.
Eclipse started as a Java IDE, but currently has plug-ins for development
in other languages, including C, C++, Python, Perl and more.
The Eclipse Foundation manages an impressive collection of
Eclipse Projects. The users of Eclipse can also benefit from a large
library of plug-ins developed by software companies and independent developers.
Most plug-ins can be found in
Eclipse Plugin Central and
Eclipse-Plugins.
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MyEclipse
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MyEclipse is a commercial Java EE IDE and Web development tool suite for
the Eclipse platform. Its official name is MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench
and it is maintained by Genuitec.
MyEclipse is a very well integrated collection of both proprietary and open source
plug-ins. It includes solutions for UML, AJAX, Web, Web Services, J2EE, JSP, XML,
Struts, JSF, Java Persistence, EJB, extended database support and other features.
The downloaded version comes pre-configured with the Tomcat servlet engine and
the Derby database.
MyEclipse is available in two primary versions: Professional and
Standard. In February 2008, Genuitec introduced MyEclipse Blue Edition,
a feature-rich IDE customized for WebSphere development. In February 2010,
Genuitec introduced MyEclipse for Spring, a set of accelerators for Spring
development. All editions are available through an annual license subscription
and are priced at a fraction of competitive offerings.
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Although IDEs have specialized editors for different types of files,
there are tasks for which developers may prefer a generic editor. The choice of
an editor is a matter of personal preference and may also depend on the type of
editing tasks. There is a number of free or reasonably priced editors suitable
for various editing purposes. TotalEdit is a perfect example of a very versatile
and feature rich editor.
| Generic Editors |
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TotalEdit
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TotalEdit is an excellent text and file editor available from
Coder Tools.
It is free for commercial and non-commercial purposes (freeware).
Many of its features are configurable. Some of the most useful features are:
- Language-specific syntax coloring for many languages including PHP, C, C++,
Java, HTML, ASP, JSP, CSS, Javascript, Perl, Python, Ruby, Pascal, and SQL
- File comparison
- Hex editor
- Unicode Support (UTF-8 and UTF-16)
- Configurable code backup
- keeps the history of saved files
- offers the ability to compare file versions
- Code folding (for HTML, and XML as well as C++, Java, Javascript, C#)
- Powerful search tools
- search multiple files and folders
- search and replace using regular expressions
- External tool integration (e.g., command line, Windows Explorer)
- Portable software (can be installed on a USB flash drive and used
across multiple PCs)
The full list of TotalEdit features is available on the product's website.
The key features are also summarized by
Softpedia.
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TotalEdit Pro
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TotalEdit Pro can be very useful for database developers. It includes
the same features as TotalEdit and an excellent set of tools for accessing and
querying databases. TotalEdit Pro can connect to almost any database.
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