The NetBeans Platform is a generic framework for Swing applications. It provides the “plumbing” that, before, every developer had to write themselves—saving state, connecting actions to menu items, toolbar items and keyboard shortcuts; window management, and so on.

The NetBeans Platform provides all of these out of the box. You don’t need to manually code these or other basic features, yourself, anymore. See what some NetBeans-based applications look like. The platform does not add a lot of overhead to your application — but it can save a huge amount of time and work.