Upon running NetBeans for the first time, NetBeans Start Page is displayed, as shown in the following screenshot. This page acts as a welcome to NetBeans, providing links to demos, tutorial, the NetBeans community, and much more content related to NetBeans. Control over whether this page is displayed when NetBeans is started comes from the Show On Startup checkbox in the top-right corner of the window. The default for this option is checked so that the start page is displayed when NetBeans starts up.

After reading the Start Page and creating a project, the standard NetBeans screen layout is displayed. This consists of several windows, which can be rearranged. The basic NetBeans screen layout is shown in the following screenshot:

The main screen is broken down into six main areas: