move#2: Editing with style…
With NetBeans 6.0 getting closer to beta-1, by now I spent more or less a month working solely with NetBeans 6.0 daily builds, and yet I haven’t found a reason to make me regret my attempt to move here. Aside the fact that the issue / exception reporting in NetBeans is rather helpful while using testing / pre-release builds and the NetBeans folks seem to be busy getting the most severe issues resolved at quite an impressive speed, I still then and now discover one or another small feature worth mentioning… Like, right now, the CSS editor in NetBeans 6.0 (click for full image):
Straight away: I hate most of the web editing tools out there, mainly because I can’t get used to working with most of the pseudo-WYSIWYG editors out there and the markup / CSS they produce, and because, on the other side, using a code-only editor is not always helpful building something considered “visual”. The NetBeans approach to a CSS editor, so, seems to be a pretty good “middle ground” here: While I generally can use the code-centric editing view including features like code-completion for CSS attributes, the “preview” section as well as the small “fake-visual” editor helps getting a clear idea of how the selection you’re currently dealing with will look like. Though the CSS feature still obviously has some flaws that need to be addressed, I really like this approach and know what I am likely to use also for working with CSS outside JSP projects, next time.