﻿ NetBeansDreamTeam/Proposals/WrongContent - NetBeans Wiki


Revision as of 08:43, 30 March 2011 by Geertjan (Talk | contribs)

DRAFT: List of Broken Links and Pages With Wrong Content

Members of the NetBeans Dream Team have identified the following problems on netbeans.org and would like them to be updated/changed.


NetBeans Partners page needs to be updated. Identified by Geertjan

Mistakes found by Tom Wheeler

GENERAL NOTE: Since so many pages contain outdated information, it would be really helpful if the "last modified" date appeared on every page. This is easy to do with server side includes, PHP, JSP or pretty much any other Web technology.

'Front page is quite confusing.' It has a photo of a box labeled "NetBeans IDE 7.0" immediately adjacent to a large heading "NetBeans IDE 6.9.1", below which is a button that says "Download FREE NetBeans IDE 6.9.1." On the other side of that is a prominent image which says "NetBeans IDE 7.0 Release Candidate 1 Available." I think most new users would be baffled by this -- should they download 7.0, 6.9.1 or 7.0 Release Candidate 1? All images are of basically equal prominence and there is no guidance about versions there.


'OpenSolaris logo has been removed from set of icons at bottom of most netbeans.org pages, but still appears on bottom of some (such as IssueZilla: http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/).' This should be consistent. I also notice that Project Kenai logo appears on the IssueZilla page but missing from the main page. The plugin portal doesn't have any logos (which is probably the best choice of all).


'There is an article "Five New Java Champions Elected (The Java Source)" under NetBeans Community News (http://netbeans.org/community/news/).' I don't understand how this relates to NetBeans. The page linked to does not discuss how these people contribute to NetBeans or even use NetBeans. In fact, NetBeans is not even mentioned in the article at all. Likewise, the article "Oracle TechCast: "Java and Oracle, One Year Later" Replay" (http://blogs.oracle.com/otn/2011/02/techcast_live_java_and_oracle.html) does not mention NetBeans at all.

Comment (Geertjan): Those are articles of interest to anyone using NetBeans. The fact that NetBeans is not explicitly mentioned is irrelevant. It is actually very rare that articles not mentioning NetBeans are included in the News. If it happens once or twice and the topic is relevant to anyone using NetBeans, then I don't see this as being a problem at all.

'History page (http://netbeans.org/about/history.html), "The Early Years" section.' Missing a space after 4.1 ("netBeans 4.1was built on"). Also, the history page seems to say very little about the last five years of history; there's no mention of anything concrete beyond 5.0. The quote "It also worth noting that almost all of the original architects are still involved in the project" seems to be missing an "is". While it may have been factually correct in 2005, is it still accurate in 2011? I have a picture of the dozen or so original students working on NetBeans in 1997. How many of them are still working on it now?

Comment (Geertjan): Fixed the typos. A thorough review is needed for this page and it definitely needs to be updated.

'Legal Materials (http://netbeans.org/about/legal/).' Why does all of this stuff still say Sun? This is a very brief page and I see "Sun" twice, along with "SCA" twice and links to various documents on the sun.com domain. I would assume that it should say Oracle now. Oracle obviously updated this page to link to their privacy policy, so why did they leave everything else untouched?

Comment (Geertjan): I looked in "about/legal" and found very many references to Sun. We need to go through all these pages and fix them.

'NetBeans is Open Source page (http://netbeans.org/about/os/index.html).' "Development of the Platform and IDE happen in public. Decisions are made on public mailing lists, by consensus." does not seem to reflect how Oracle does things with respect to NetBeans. IMHO, either the behavior or the description of what to expect needs to change so they are congruent.

Comment (Geertjan): We're doing our best to work on this, continually. As you're aware, we're working on the governance model. These things will take time.

'Contact Form (http://netbeans.org/about/contact_form.html?to=2&subject=NetBeans%2520story).' I really hate submitting things into a black box. The form does not tell you where the message went exactly, and there is no way to follow up afterwards should you receive no response. In general, I think that organizations with opaque contact forms like this are sending a message that they're really not interested in what you have to say. I can understand the need to avoid spam (though no effort is made to mask e-mail addresses on the public mailing lists), but you should at least provide the name and/or e-mail address to whom the message was sent in the confirmation page, since they would have completed the security task at that point to prove it's not a spam bot.


'NetBeans Features (http://netbeans.org/features/all.html).' NetBeans Platform heading: "Tools for Rich client application development". Why is "Rich" capitalized here?

'"Lexer API for creating tokens from a textual input."' This is NOT a platform feature -- it's an IDE feature. The lexer is not part of NetBeans Platform sources.

'The OSGi heading is missing a horizontal rule below the blue "OSGi" text like every other heading has.' Additionally, all the text in the OSGi section is in blue, unlike any other section on the page.

'IMHO, NetBeans Platform is not being given a place of prominence on this page.' It's stuck at the bottom, below even those IDE features which have been abandoned as part of Oracle's future development of the IDE (Ruby, Groovy, etc.). There are few bullet points underneath this topic, compared with things like PHP or Mobile development. The things listed there are just a list -- they don't seem to be written to excite or demonstrate useful benefits to the reader.

'IssueZilla page (http://netbeans.org/community/issues.html).' "For website, source code repository, or mailing list problems file an issue against the www project." The "component" is required on the ""Enter new issue page", but there is no component for mailing lists. There is not even an "unknown" or "other" category. In general, I think requiring a component is a mistake (IIRC this is a fairly recent change) since some people won't know what to select and will abandon the attempt rather than choose the wrong thing, but at a minimum, you need to have a right thing to choose in all cases and this doesn't have one.

'Priorities (linked text from the Enter New Issue page: URL = http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/page.cgi?id=fields.html#priority).' "This field describes the importance and order in which a bug should be fixed. This field is utilized by the programmers/engineers to prioritize their work to be done. The available priorities range from P1 (most important) to P5 (least important). "

OK, so how do I know what to choose? IIRC, there used to be some useful description of how to set it (e.g. P1 means you're unable to proceed and there is no known workaround, P2 means it's slowing down your work a lot but you're still able to move on, P5 is a cosmetic issue, etc.). If I am remembering this correctly, why was it removed and how was this change communicated? If it's not intended that the issue submitter sets it (Issue Type seems to be closer to what Priority used to be), then why are submitters allowed to set it?

'Testimonials page (http://netbeans.org/features/ide/testimonials.html).' Quote from Graeme Rocher seems really dubious to me, since I know Graeme is a Grails committer and this support is no longer being actively developed. It even mentions version 6.5, which is probably too old to be relevant for a testimonial (the implication being that newer versions aren't as good or that he's found something better in the meantime).

I think testimonials should have first and last name, and ideally job title. Who really cares what some random person named "Gene" or "Sushant" says. What impresses me more is someone who I have heard of, whose opinion I value, who does work similar to what I do and who is willing to put their name behind it.

'NetBeans Localization and Translation Projects page (http://netbeans.org/community/contribute/localise.html).' The spelling of "localization" is inconsistent on this page. The rest of the netbeans.org site tends to use American English spelling, which would favor "localization." While the main page heading and two links on that page use that spelling, the page title and four other places on that page use the British English spelling of "localisation." I don't really care which you use as long as it is consistent, though since the mailing list is "dev@nblocalization.netbeans.org" perhaps that spelling is better.

"Read First Steps in order to contribute: Please sign Contributor Agreement and register to OpenCTI, our editor for translations." This is unusual phrasing ("register to" should probably be "register with") and is missing some indefinite articles.

There are lots of exclamation marks on this page, which seems unprofessional.

'Calendar of Upcoming Events (http://netbeans.org/community/news/calendar.html).' Capitalization in title does not follow common English style guidelines.

The first five items on the page are not upcoming at all -- they've come and gone.

"Registration information is in Deutsch" under NetBeans Day Munich. I realize that Deutsch is German for the German language, but since the page itself is in English, wouldn't it be more clear to say "German" instead of "Deutsch" here? I Imagine someone whose native language is not English and does not speak any German at all would be confused by this.

'Commit Rules (http://netbeans.org/community/guidelines/commit.html).' "Execute" ant clean "to clear the sources". It doesn't clear the sources but rather build artifacts (classfiles, etc.).

"Currently we are building with JDK 1.5, so you can use all its methods, but be careful not to depend on anything newer." Is this still true? I remember some discussion of moving to JDK 6 but I don't recall the result.

"If you need more information about XTest, please visit the http://netbeans.org/projects/obsolete/ site. " Why would you link to an obsolete site? This information needs to be made current. In general, I would guess all references to XTest (and there are many on this page) are obsolete and need to be replaced with whatever is current.

'NetBeans Code Conventions (http://netbeans.org/community/guidelines/code-conventions.html)' This seems to date from 2005. Does the Code Example on this page accurately reflect a modern code sample? Do you want it to say Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems? Is the CDDL the correct license reference to use?

Since Generics have since been part of the language since 2004 and since NetBeans has been using Java 5 for several years now, the bullet point and code example which instruct one to use "List/*<NoSuchElement>*/" constructs is obsolete.

'NetBeans Web Site Guidelines (http://netbeans.org/community/guidelines/web-guide.html).' How much of this page is still accurate? Can you still set up project Web sites (e.g. foo.netbeans.org)? Does the page linked to from here (http://netbeans.org/projects/help/pages/ManageProject#Website) still apply? It is dated from 2009 and mentions Subversion, rather than mercurial.

It should mention that only those employed by Oracle can be part of the Web team. That should also be mentioned here (http://netbeans.org/community/guidelines/www-guide.html) and here (http://netbeans.org/community/teams/web/index.html).

'NetBeans Web Team (http://netbeans.org/community/teams/web/index.html).' The "team member profiles and permissionsi" link contains a wayward "i" at the end of "permissions."

'NetBeans Evangelism (http://netbeans.org/community/teams/evangelism/index.html).' This page mentions that "NetBeans Evangelists travel around the world to bring NetBeans to you." Isn't that outdated? I am not aware that there has been an active evangelism team for NetBeans for at least a couple of years. If there is not one, this page should be changed so that it reflects the current state; if there really is one, it should list who the members of that team are.

'NetBeans World Tour (http://netbeans.org/community/articles/worldtour/index.html).' Why is there a separate list for "Past events" when all of these dates are in the past.

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