Oracle updates NetBeans for HTML5.

With the release of version 7.3 of NetBeans, Oracle has updated the IDE (integrated developer environment) so Java developers can more easily build rich HTML5-based user interfaces for their mobile and Web applications.
NetBeans 7.3 "allows developers to use the same IDE [to compose in] HTML5 that they would use for building back-end services that their Web and mobile application development would connect to," said Bill Pataky, Oracle vice president of product management of tools and frameworks.

Increasingly, enterprise Java developers are using browsers as the primary interface for their applications, so it was a natural choice to expand the support for Web 2.0 technologies, Pataky said.
The new version of the IDE, released Thursday, contains a number of new features to aid in writing HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code. The IDE offers a full set of code completion capabilities for these technologies, allowing the IDE to intuitively suggest the remainder of a line of code that the developer is typing in.
The IDE also makes debugging Web interfaces easier. Oracle now offers a plug-in for the Google Chrome browser that can render a Web page as it is being composed by the developer in the IDE. This feature uses the WebKit remote debugging protocol.

source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/oracle-updates-netbeans-html5-213212

Eclipse Foundation sees growing developer interest for cloud, mobile.

Developers and others in the Eclipse community are increasingly relying on cloud application deployments and are trending toward mobile application development , according to a survey conducted in April by the Eclipse Foundation.

The foundation's findings were covered in a report being released on Friday, entitled "The Open Source Developer Report" for June 2011. Findings pertaining to mobile and cloud development are unsurprising, with these trends picking up steam in the overall IT realm. "More and more people are deploying or planning to deploy applications to a cloud infrastructure. In 2011, 36 percent have plans compared to 29.5 percent in 2010. The fastest growing platform appears to be private cloud infrastructure, growing from 16.2 percent (2010) to 23.1 percent [in 2011]," the foundation noted in its report.

The report found that mobile applications are becoming important to the Eclipse community: "Sixty percent have already developed or plan to develop mobile applications, 35 percent have already deployed an application to an external customers and/or an internal user. Android is the most popular platform (85.3 percent) followed by Apple iOS (66.3 percent)."

Results in the survey are based on responses from 624 persons worldwide, with 54.6 percent of respondents identifying themselves as programmers, 14.9 percent as system architects, and 8.3 percent as development managers. Java was the preferred programming language of respondents, with 75.7 percent using it. C/C++ followed, with 9.2 percent. PHP was cited by 4.8 percent of respondents.

Windows usage by developers increased, countered by a bit of a drop-off in Linux. "For the first time since beginning the survey, we saw an increase in the number of developers choosing Windows as their preferred operating system for development," according to a section in the report pertaining to the developer desktop.

source:http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/eclipse-foundation-sees-growing-developer-interest-cloud-mobile-793