IntelliJ's IDEA Java/Groovy/Ruby/PHP/etc. IDE is considered by many to be the best IDE for Java/Groovy, there is a free version.

• Download and install IntelliJ's IDEA v9.0+ CE from here.


• Download the latest AribaWeb plugin for IDEA here.
  
  
  
  • md aribaweb\lib in IDEA's plugin directory
  
  
  • copy or move the plugin JAR into the above directory

• Create a new AribaWeb project i.e. type aw and follow the prompts (e.g. see this video)


• Launch IDEA at the end i.e. MyFirstApp.ipr
  
  
  • You'll be prompted to tell IDEA where AribaWeb lives
  
  
  • Point it to wherever you installed AiribaWeb
  
  
  • Adjust the Ant version to be used for your project after watching this video
  
  
  • You can adjust the JDK used by IDEA for your project under File | Project Structure | Project (aka General Settings for Project 'Whatever')

• BTW, there's a little more info. here, including how to install the Eclipse plugin

Ariba made it big through the last dotcom boom/bust with procurement services via the web for B2B; they (quietly) open-sourced a web development framework (that they've developed continuously since 1999) last summer (AribaWeb) and now it's come to my notice - e.g. they claim 100 times less code than Rails, never mind JSF, Tapestry, Struts2, etc.

Live, in the browser editing of the presentation artifacts is one interesting feature; it's all based on JEE and has an ORM layer over top of Hibernate (something like Grails has i.e. GORM). Read all about it here.

P.S. Somehow Kirk beating the Gorm is still one of my favourite (cheesy) sci-fi scenes; how about you?