6 Must Have IDE Plugins Featured at JavaOne

This week I’m at JavaOne with IDR Solutions and I recently attended a talk hosted by the developers of 6 incredibly popular IDE plug-ins. After watching the presentation I was sold, and will definitely be using some of the following plug-ins when working on our online PDF to HTML5 converter.

I will be listing 6 Must-Have IDE Plugins Featured at JavaOne and will give a quick overview of what each one does in hope that you may find one that will help with your work as a developer.

Jelastic :

Jelastic is a great (available for free) plugin, it’s the first Java cloud computing platform that allows you to host or scale a Java application without a single code change. It bypasses the need to find the correct servers, operating system, application servers, and databases before being able to deploy your code. Jelastic is very easy to deploy, all you have to do is upload your application into Jelastic and it will be automatically deployed across all your nodes. This makes managing an application’s life cycle across multiple environments, it allows you to easily switch between them.

NBAndroid :

NBAndroid is very useful for supporting an Android applications development cycle. It has diverse functionality that assists in the development of your Android application.

It features Core Android SDK support along with a LogCat viewer integrated into the IDE, this is very important when detecting what’s going on while the code is running live on your device. It also supplies a GUI layout preview which allows you to design the User Interface more efficiently in the IDE without having to re-deploy the application to see every change. NBAndroid also works with Android SDK projects and the debug cycle is supported using emulators or real devices. With regular updates and active support, this is a great plug-in for any Android Developer.

CodeNameOne :

Codename One is a free open source solution that allows you to rapidly build native applications to all mobile devices using Java & optionally a GUI builder. The framework provides full access to the underlying native platform while still providing remarkable portability.
Codename One consists of a Client Library, IDE plugin, Designer tool (GUI builder, theme designer, localization editor, etc.), Simulator environment, Build servers & cloud provisioning services. Codename One is fast. Simple benchmarks show it beating Objective-C and on other platforms, Codename One uses the native VM where possible to achieve similar results. Graphics rendering is implemented with the gaming API’s hence providing game-like performance.

Gradle :

Gradle combines the power and flexibility of Ant with the dependency management and conventions of Maven into a more effective way to build. Powered by a Groovy DSL and packed with innovation, Gradle provides a declarative way to describe all kinds of builds through sensible defaults. Gradle is quickly becoming the build system of choice for many open source projects, leading-edge enterprises and legacy automation challenges.

JRebel :

JRebel is a very useful plugin and will increase your productivity massively. This is achieved because to see a code change you would normally have to re-build and deploy your project, however, JRebel bypasses this dependency and allows you to see a code-change instantly. It works by versioning classes and resources individually and updating them one at a time instead of a grouped deployment. When you as a developer make a code change, the change is immediately reflected in the deployed application, skipping the build and redeploy phases and preventing an average of 5.25 work weeks per year in redeploys! A must-have if you ask me!

Vaadin :

Vaadin is a very nice Java Framework that allows you to build a stylish and modern web application that has effective performance with the user in mind. It features a server-side architecture, which means that the majority of the logic runs on the servers. Ajax technology is used at the browser-side to ensure a rich and interactive user experience. On the client-side Vaadin is built on top of and can be extended with Google Web Toolkit.

If you want more information on JavaOne 2013 and further coverage of the entire event check out our JavaOne 2013 Series Index, which covers everything that is happening and is constantly updated, keep checking back for new info!

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