NetBeans 6.9 Beta is available

The NetBeans team announced that beta of 6.9 version is available for download.

Feature highlights:

OSGi

• Develop OSGi bundles with Maven
• Bundled Felix container, ability to register other containers such as Equinox
• Use OSGi bundles in a NetBeans RCP application

NetBeans Platform

• OSGi interoperability (developing and consuming OSGi bundles in Platform-based applications)
• Felix 2.0.3 OSGi support, experimental Equinox support
• Convert NetBeans modules into OSGi bundles and run them in an unmodified OSGi container
• Branding Editor for both Ant and Maven Platform-based projects
• NetBeans Platform-based applications generate installers for most common operating systems
• Enhanced support for consuming web applications and connecting to databases

JavaFX

• Unique JavaFX Composer for form-like UI components with states and access to various data sources
• Added and improved editor hints and refactoring
• Enhanced Palettes for JavaFX Shapes, Colors, Effects, and Charts
• Improved code formatting

Java EE

• Support for Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) (JSR-299) has been added
• Spring Framework 3.0 support
• Easy regeneration of JPA entities after database change
• REST web services support for RCP applications

Java

• Java Debugger breakpoint grouping, debugger attach parameter history
• Support for annotation processors in the editor, configurable in the Project Properties
• New Applet and Web Start (JNLP) support
• Improved navigation in Stack Trace Analyzer and URLs, Go To Overridden/Implemented Method action

Web Languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript

• Refactoring and find usages for CSS and HTML-like languages
• Code completion and hyperlinking for id and class selector attributes
• Refactoring to extract inlined styles to a separate style section

PHP

• PHP Zend Framework
• “Overrides/Implements” and “Is Overridden/Implemented” annotations
• New formatter with many formatting rules

Ruby

• Ruby on Rails 3.0

C/C++

• “Overrides/Is Overridden” annotations and hyperlink navigation
• Console type “Internal Terminal”
• Download project files modified on remote host to local host
• Makefile targets can be sorted and opened in Navigator

General

• More editor hints
• Spell checker support in the Editor
• Use the Help menu to report bugs and slowness against NetBeans IDE
• Support for multiple Kenai-based team servers (e.g. kenai.com and netbeans.org)

Full list of features in this release is here
Beta version you can download from this page.