Foreword

“The NetBeans Platform abides,” is what the Dude in the Big Lebowski might have said, had he known about the NetBeans Platform at all, which he probably did, somehow. Over the years, an incredibly wide range of applications have been built on top of the application framework that is the NetBeans Platform, from air defense systems at NATO to medical applications at Stanford, from military software at Northrop Grumman to software development tools at Oracle. . . and hundreds, probably thousands, of other applications in between.

Even whilst the uninitiated queried the relevance of the NetBeans Platform—at first challenging NetBeans Platform users with “what about the browser?” and then a few years later with “what about mobile devices?”—those using the NetBeans Platform have always known its applicability to the niche in which it fits so well. There will always be a need to put together modular applications that run on the desktop, and cross-platform portability will always be a predominant concern, making Java in combination with the NetBeans Platform a uniquely well-suited environment for serious application developers.

There certainly is something deeply intellectual about working with the NetBeans Platform. Once you’re out of the woods of the initial learning experience, you will discover that you’re not only figuring out how to construct a puzzle out of a disparate set of pieces, but that the pieces themselves are objects that you’re constructing. There’s a meta-level of enjoyment that is a strangely distinct feature of progressing in your understanding of the NetBeans Platform and all it provides.

Moreover, as this book shows throughout, what Swing and JavaFX have in common is that they’re UI toolkits, not application frameworks. Neither of these toolkits provides any infrastructure to connect the pieces together. The NetBeans Platform is an application framework for both toolkits, either separately or together. In fact, as you will quickly learn in this book, the NetBeans Platform is a meeting point that unites the stability and depth of experience that Swing developers bring to the table together with the innovation and the rich content that the JavaFX world provides.

I wish you a lot of fun as you acquire new knowledge with the NetBeans Platform, while learning how to create meaningful applications in Java.

Geertjan Wielenga
NetBeans Product Manager