Sun Microsystems Jan. 25 announced the availability of its Sun Java Studio Creator 2 development tool for visually creating and deploying Web applications.

In addition, Sun announced that Creator 2, which features extensive support for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development, will be available for free.

Support for AJAX development is growing. Click here to read more.

Dan Roberts, director of developer tools marketing at Sun, said Creator 2 is aimed at Visual Basic developers, developers who have used fourth-generation languages, and new developers who want "to be able to build full Java applications that can be used with existing Java infrastructure."

The focus of Sun Java Studio Creator 2 is on building rich Internet applications, Roberts said.

The new version is based on the latest release of Sun's NetBeans open-source integrated development environment, NetBeans 4.1. NetBeans 4.1 provides version control support, code refactoring and improved support for Ant-based projects. Creator 2 also features a new set of JSF (JavaServer Faces) components.

Meanwhile, the product supports AJAX in different ways, Roberts said. "You can use it [AJAX] a couple of ways," he said. "You can use JSF components to encapsulate AJAX APIs." This enables users to create mashups by wrapping existing services to build applications. In addition, Sun is releasing a set of new AJAX components that developers can use to build applications, Roberts said.

Click here to read about other AJAX development tools.

Java Studio Creator 2 also features support for visual design of JSR (Java Specification Request) 168—a specification to enable interoperability between Java portlets and Web portals—standard portlet applications deployable to the Sun Java System Portal Server, and any standard portlet container, Roberts said. The product also provides HTML page import and a graphical CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) editor.

Java Studio Creator used to cost $99, but Sun is now offering it as a free download with registration to the Sun Developer Network. SDN registration also is free, Roberts said.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.