NetBean's new HTML5 application development environment, Easel, provides Java developers with a new project type specific to HTML5 with an improved JavaScript editor.

Until now developers who want to produce HTML5 apps have had to make do with a fudge and choose some other project type in the IDE of their choice.

Now Project Easel breaks new ground with an HTML5 project type with JavaScript testing support and a JavaScript Debugger. The JavaScript editor is significantly improved by enhanced code completion. A page inspector, a visual CSS style editor, an embedded WebKit browser and deep integration with Chrome are also part of Project Easel.

The following video shows how the new project wizard which lets you select initial templates and specific versions of JavaScript libraries to be downloaded from content delivery networks:

This second screencast demonstrates how to work with the JavaScript editor and debugger to step into and edit files in an HTML5 application:

All in all this release of NetBeans gives developers the environment they need to create and debug cross platform web and mobile applicatins uing the lastest  HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS standards.

Project Easel isn't, however, the only addition to NetBeans 7.3. By way of platform-wide features, its main toolbar has a new drop down list for overflow situations and an Open Recent file menu has been added.The profiles now supports Linux ARM, offers CPU snapshots comparisons and has sampled memory profiling.

For those working with Java, a new navigation bar showing the current embedding in the editor provides a breadcrumbs facility. There are also updated views, a set of hints and refactorings and filters for the results of Find Usages.

Java EE developers now have a JPQL testing tool and enhancements to the REST service development features while those working with Java FX will find support for SceneBuilder and FXML with improved FXML editing including accurate code completion and error marking.

Fro PHP developers NetBeans now provides parsers for annotations (such as in Symfony 2 and Doctrine 2), basic integration for the Composer dependency manager, Twig code completion, matching for related tags and errors from unmatched tags.

Memory usage has been reduced by at least half for big C/C++ projects and there are parser speed and indexing improvements.  

Support for Groovy 2.0 rounds out the list of new features that should persuade NetBeans users to downlaod the 7.3 beta.