Either using web apps has shot my standards to hell, or the extra features of Netbeans won me over. I think it’s the latter. That, and I was getting so tangled up in Textmate’s ever-opening tabs that I’d gone back to BBEdit (its distinction between project browser and actively-editing files is handy).

There’s just no way I can call Textmate an IDE now.

Thanks for the response. I see what you’re saying, and that screenshot looks fairly nice. Still, those “big bubbles” are such a nasty appearance to me, I don’t know why - it’s really getting to my skin.

Also, the dialogues in Netbeans are slower than they are in Textmate. Textmate feels more snappy, no?

I would have to admit that Netbeans has some sweet things that Textmate doesn’t, especially with the subversion interface.

I dig what you’re saying and when I first saw netbeans (I was a textmate user) I thought quite the same. However, I loved the features so much, that I grew less bothered by the apparent clunkyness of the ui.

That said though, I actually find netbeans has more finesse and style than textmate, except it’s hidden deeper than the instant appearance of the gui. I actually find myself finding textmate really clunky and ugly these days - you can ask my missus, she always hears me cussing it’s find dialogue and getting p’d off with it’s indentation engine.

I do agree that texmate has got that gorgeous cocoa look.

However, you can seriously tone down the clutter of netbeans gui. Just look at this pic

http://www.lifeonrails.org/images/articles/netbeansbare.png

Here you can see it almost as stripped as textmate.

To be honest, I’ve been so in love with netbeans functionality that I never thought to do this before, but I love it even more now, so thanks for your blog article :-)

I’d really like to be able to use anything from the RSpec bundle in Textmate. I think the entire bundle is really helpful.

If you want some more feedback I’ll share with you. I would really be more inclined to use Netbeans if the interface was a tad smaller, the entire ui is just so bulky. I know that’s probably asking a lot, but I can pretty much guarantee you a slicker interface would be completely bad-ass.

Another thing that I use heavily is HAML/SASS. It’s an alternative to RHTML that is gaining popularity at a rapid rate, if you could integrate that bundle as well, that would be amazing.

I truly like Netbeans, I just can’t see myself using it unless it had those bundles, and a smaller interface.

Thanks for the comment,
Daniel