Today (30/10/2006) netbeans.org has released the latest edition of their
Java IDE: NetBeans 5.5. In addition to that they also moved some of the
enhancement packs out of beta stage and released them as stable. You now
have the option to use the Enterprise pack as well as the long
anticipated Visual Web pack (the latter allowing you to quickly create
web applications in a 'Java Studio Creator' -like way).

Please note that I am biased towards NetBeans but it looks to me as if
Sun is really walking on the road to success here. Slowly but steadily
they are now concentrating all the good parts from their major IDE's
(Java Studio Enterprise and Java Studio Creator) into a single modulair
IDE which, as a side note, also happens to be open sourced. This also
includes the enhancements mentioned above.

There is a small sidenote which insiders could have expected: the
Enterprise pack for NB 5.5 does not include UML modeling support by
default. This may be a turn off but lets be honost: it really wasn't
that stable. Trying to utilize the 'documentation' panel to quickly
write up something for an object basicly crashed the entire IDE (tested
on Linux). ...Just like it did with the Java Studio Enterprise IDE.

Still, there is no need for dispair because if you feel comfortable with
UML modeling support as it was then all you need to do is use the update
manager and simply include the 'beta' options. Personally I include
support for Java webstart together with the UML modeling support this
way.

And there you have it. I think that many people will be anxious to give
the visual webdev pack a try since its visual development tools are
really something else. In case you missed it you can see a overal demo
about all these new features here:

part 1 :
http://www.netbeans.org/download/flash/why-netbeans-part1/player.html

part 2 :
http://www.netbeans.org/download/flash/why-netbeans-part2/player.html

For the impatient: just picture Java Studio Creator with several
enhancements while fully supporting the Matisse GUI builder. I don't
think that (Java) GUI development has ever become this easy..

And as another sidenode; netbeans.org has totally reworked their
website. While all the previous topics are still in place it just looks
and feels quite different.

Source:

NetBeans.org: http://www.netbeans.org/
NetBeans 5.5 download: http://www.netbeans.info/downloads/