I was wondering if there is a plugin for Netbeans to enable this?
Netbeans used to ship previously with the Woodstock component library (which died January 2009 due to serious problems in the newer standards-compliant webbrowsers) and the corresponding visual editor with a "component palette". After it died, the users were recommended to migrate to ICEFaces. Tools were provided to convert existing Woodstock projects to ICEFaces projects (although I ve read here and there that you can better convert/code it by hand yourself).
I was wondering if there is a plugin for Netbeans to enable this?
At their Tools Support section I see plugins/tools for both Eclipse and Netbeans.
Also to those who have experience with ICEfaces, what IDE do you prefer and why?
I don t have hands on experience with ICEFaces, but I have hands on experience with Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. Both are excellent IDE s to program in. I ve tried Netbeans for web development some years ago. But it bugged and didn t do what I asked/expected it to do, so I threw it away. Since then I ve never touched it, but it may be have been improved lately. Just try some different IDEs yourself and conclude yourself. Own experience is always the best answer on those kind of subjective matters.
Note that I do not recommend drag n dropping code. It may initially speed up development, but you will end up swimming around disoriented in code soup when you re about to maintain/bugfix/enhance/reuse the code.
