Once you've installed the Scala plugin into NetBeans IDE and taken it for a test drive as described yesterday, you're a couple of clicks away from using Lift in NetBeans IDE. Click to enlarge the image below, which shows the Scala editor, in the context of a Maven web project, together with the result shown in the embedded browser. As can be seen below, the Scala console is also integrated, thanks to the Scala plugin.
Best of all, since the application is deployed to GlassFish, a redeploy happens on save. That means I make a change, save, and then refresh the browser, whether embedded or external, to see the change. This, combined with everything else, makes NetBeans IDE a very productive environment for Lift development.
Even better than best of all is that NetBeans IDE 7.4 enables Maven projects to integrate with the browser, i.e., either the Chrome browser or the embedded browser. That means you'll be able to click in the browser and see where items are defined in the IDE, use the DOM Browser in the IDE to browse live through the items in your browser, and even change properties on the fly in the IDE and immediately see the changes live in the browser, as this screenshot shows:
And the two screenshots below show how I arrived at the above result, i.e., I indicated I want to create a project from a Maven archetype and then searched for "lift":
Interested to hear of others trying out this procedure, i.e., the steps described yesterday together with the above outline, very welcome to leave comments at the end of this blog entry.
In short, though, I believe that once the NetBeans Scala plugin is updated to be usable in NetBeans IDE 7.4, which is a task that only makes sense to do once NetBeans IDE 7.4 is actually released, NetBeans IDE will be paradise for Lift developers.