One of the features of NetBeans that I use the most is the Projects Groups. It allows to arbitrarily group projects together then switch from one group to another. For instance as below, projects related to a lambda lab, project related to the Yoko Tsuno site I help maintaining in a Yoko group, and the default (none) group. Or to switch between a feature development group and a bug fix group.

NetBeans also allows to create a group populated with a project and its required projects, or from all the projects in a directory.

Up to NetBeans 7.4 this was contained in a sub menu of the project

context menu:

Fairly fast, but may be not so easy when dealing with a large number of project groups.

So in NetBeans 8 Beta this is changed to a full dialog:

Making it easier to remove several or all groups.
(A nice hidden feature of that dialog is that double clicking a group switches to it)

However I feel, in addition to the buttons being too high, that the “New Group…” button could be moved to the right buttons list:

In NetBeans 8 Beta, the “Create New Group” dialog creates a new group and switch to it, dismissing the “Manage Groups” dialog along the way:

I also think it should offer the possibility to either create a new group and switch to it, but also to create a new group and return to the “Manage Group” dialog to allow for creating more groups:

(though “Create Group” would now just return to the “Manage Group” dialog)

Let’s see how in the next post…