Downloaded netbeans 6.0 a few days ago. Spent a while fighting the layout manager. Changed the layout from absolute to gridbag (my favourite) still fought the layout manager. Gave up in disgust. Some time later, thought, I wonder if it is a bug. So went back, downloaded all the latest patches. Lo and behold! the layout manager is now doing what I want it to do. It had some kind of weird resizing problem.