The NetBeans UI Development Process

The NetBeans UI Team would like to offer its UI design and development services to the NetBeans community. Our services range from simple advice to actual UI development. Disclaimer: We are a small team, and may not always be able to offer more than advice. However, we will do our best to provide as much help as we can.

This document describes how to get assistance from the NetBeans UI Team, and what to expect during the UI development process. To begin, let's define some terms.

• Module Owner: The developer who owns the module's basic code.
• UI Owner: The UI Team developer who helps develop the module's UI.
• HI Owner: The UI Team Human Interface (HI) engineer who helps design the module's UI.

Contacting the NetBeans UI Team

Whether you are a module owner, someone with a new module idea, or someone who wants to contribute work/ideas to a module, you should consider contacting the NetBeans UI Team. There are two ways to contact us:

1. The nbui mailing list. Post your help request, along with any module plans and/or UI sketches, to NetBeans' UI mailing list. This is the preferred contact method, since you get the benefit of the entire community's advice.
2. UI Team Members. Send your request privately to one of the UI Team members. If you need design advice, you may want to contact one of the HI engineers; if you need development advice, you may want to contact one of the UI engineers.

Please! Contact us, even if you want to develop your UI on your own. This helps us track UI changes and keep our UI snapshot list up to date!

Developing the UI

Once you have contacted the NetBeans UI Team, there is a three-step process:

Step 1: Assign and Outline The UI Team assigns your problem to the right problem owner: UI owner for implementation problems, HI owner for design problems. The module owner is contacted if necessary, e.g., if you are not the module owner. (Check out the current owner list). You and the UI Team's problem owner then work together to outline the problem.

Step 2: Discuss and Solve The UI Team's problem owner now looks for the solution. This process can include discussions with you, with the NetBeans community, and (if applicable) with the HI owner, the UI owner and the module owner. The most acceptable solution is written down, either as a formal proposal or as a summary of of the mailing list discussions.

Step 3: Implement The solution is implemented. Depending on UI Team resources, module size, module importance and module structure, the UI Team might do a variety of things, from giving advice to actually doing the implementation. As the soultion is implemented, the UI Team will guide reviews and discussions of it on the relevant community forums.