NetBeans Collaboration Project : Collablets and Code-Aware Tools for Sharing (Updated)

the IDE. With the NetBeans Collaboration modules you can discuss code with other remote developers, conduct code reviews and use code aware tools that allow remote sharing and even voice-over-IP. Let start at the beginning. The developer collaboration features in NetBeans 4.1 allow you to connect to a collaboration server or to a free NetBeans collaboration server. You need a collaboration server whether it is your own or the free NetBeans collaboration server. The collaboration server basically links the remote users together and serves to pass the information, voice, code, messages and all other collaboration bits. NetBeans has configured a collaboration server which allows you to simply use a free collaboration server and easily collaboration with other members of the NetBeans community. As a result, it becomes very easy to get started and communicate with users anywhere in the world using an enhanced code-aware 'chat'. The chat capabilities provide the added benefit of being able to "talk" code, which is sent and received with all appropriate formatting in place. You can send messages in plain text, XML, HTML, or Java code format. The message composition window is a full-fledged source editor with all of the code-completion features in place. It is also possible to share files and projects easily. Developers can make changes to the shared code and others can see the changes as they are highlighted with visual cues.

How does one quickly come up to speed on NetBeans Collaboration ? If you want to see a quick flash demo of the Collaboration Project - take a look here. A longer (and older) demo (when it was only in Java Studio Enterprise 7) can be found here. There is also a nice paper on the software here (note that the title doesn't reflect that since the paper was