Before you begin work in the IDE, you should be familiar with the following concepts:
An IDE project is a group of Java source files and its associated information about what belongs on the classpath, how to build and run the project, and so forth. The IDE stores project information in a project folder which includes an Ant build script and properties file that control the build and run settings, and a project.xml file that maps Ant targets to IDE commands. Your source directories do not need to be located in the project folder.
In the IDE, you always work inside of a project. You can create standard projects that use an IDE-generated Ant script to build the project, or create free-form projects that are based on your existing Ant scripts.
Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool used to standardize and automate build and run environments for development. The IDE's project system is build directly on top of Ant. All of the project commands, like Build Project or Run File in Debugger, call targets in the project's Ant script. You can therefore build and run your project outside the IDE exactly as it is built and run inside the IDE.
You do not need to know Ant to work with the IDE. You can set all the basic compilation and runtime options in the project's Project Properties dialog box and the IDE automatically updates your project's Ant script. If you know how to work with Ant, you can customize a standard project's Ant script or write your own Ant script for your project.
For more information about Ant, see:
Templates determine the initial appearance and behavior of the objects you want to create. They help reduce the amount of time and effort involved in creating your application. Java components, such as Swing and Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) containers, are provided as standard templates. Templates are also provided for applets, classes, dialog boxes, HTML files, text files, and bookmarks.