Features - Part 1

Personality

Personality configuration is included with the latest version of the popular IDE. With this new release, Borland finally acknowledged the fact that programmers don’t need tools to do EJB, web services, XML, CORBA and J2ME all at the same time. By utilizing the ability to configure personalities, you get to hide aspects of JBuilder that you do not need to use for a particular work session. For instance, if you are dealing with J2ME applications this entire month, you don’t really need to see J2EE tabs, so you can just deselect them. All tabs and configurations related to J2EE will then disappear. Configuration is done through the project properties dialog box. Available personalities are displayed in a hierarchy tree. Options include J2EE, CORBA, XML, database, team development amongst others. Multiple personalities are also possible. With that, you can get to setup different personalities on the same computer, allowing for multiple personnel to use the IDE.

You can customize multiple personalities with JBuilder

Preferences

According to Borland, the new IDE has been totally revamped when it comes to customizing preferences. In the past, you have two dialog boxes in the form of IDE Options and Editor Options. Now, with the new version, everything has been combined into a single dialog box – Preferences, which can be accessed from the Tools menu.

From the preferences dialog box, you get lots more options. For examples, you can choose to build your code in the background and get the IDE to close the build tab after a successful build. The ability to customize the look and feel of the IDE is a new option included with the new release. You get to change the skin of the IDE (change the look and feel if you are a Java programmer) as well as make font changes. Height adjustments can be made and different fonts can be used. It took a while for JBuilder to load the fonts for the first time, after which everything ran smoothly for me. Options to customizing UML code are also available, along with the ability to add and remove templates.

The IDE allows for customization of its look and feel

Search

JBuilder X includes new search options. Now, you can choose to go to a certain member of a class. You can also add, edit and view bookmarks in sections of your source code. The View Todos option also will allow you to view the @todos within the Javadoc comments in your code.

Refactoring

The ability to refactor is another feature included with JBuilder X. The function was first included with version 9 of the IDE. Refactoring makes it easy for you to optimize import statements, change class names, edit parameters and extract methods amongst others. Methods can also be moved about easily using the refactoring option. With JBuilder X, refactoring is a new menu added to the main JBuilder menu. The menu will automatically select refactoring options available to the current code selection.