A beta release of the open source NetBeans 6.5 IDE is being offered by Sun Microsystems on Wednesday.

The beta, available for download, has features such as an IDE-wide “QuickSearch” shortcut, a more user-friendly interface, and an automatic Compile on Save feature.

Developers can build applications for Java, PHP, C/C++, Groovy, Grails, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and AJAX. Web frameworks are supported such as Hibernate, Spring, and JavaServer Faces. The Glassfish application server and databases also are supported.

The beta release serves as an update to a Milestone 1 release offered for NetBeans 6.5. The new version officially is called NetBeans 6.5 Milestone 2.

The general release of NetBeans 6.5 previously has been set for Oct. 2. Sun also has expressed intentions to eventually add Python language support to NetBeans.

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