Rating: 

In short, I was seriously disappointed with this book.

My current employers decided to use NetBeans as the preferred way of creating Swing frontends for our database system. The documentation on the NetBeans website is far too sparse to adequately describe such a complex IDE, so I bought "NetBeans: The Definitive Guide". The book does a reasonable job of covering the editor portions of the IDE, but is all too brief in describing the forms designer.

The book is more geared towards those who are thinking of extending NetBeans for their own particular needs, and leaves a continuing hole in the market for a straightforward user guide.