From my post to nbusers:

> In any event, in my forms with a "default button," I end up doing the
> following in the constructor:
>
>          initComponents();
>          getRootPane().setDefaultButton(connectButton);
>
> There's GOT to be a way to tell NetBeans that this button is the default,
> and to put it into the initComponents. I haven't found it, though, nor in
> the manual.

you couldn't find it because there's nothing like that. This is a rather special thing (out of general JavaBeans concept) we didn't
take into account...  But it could be probably implemented (as a "synhetic" property of forms based on JRootPane). Please file an
enhancement request at http://www.netbeans.org/issues/enter_bug.cgi?product=form.

Thanks,
Tomas