Beans.isDesignTime() and other queries should be per-AppContext. We have run into situations in NetBeans where people want to use JOGL both in the Matisse GUI builder and as a plugin in NetBeans. In order to operate within Matisse JOGL requires that Beans.isDesignTime() returns true, but if that is set globally for the entire NetBeans application then plugins which use JOGL will never display any content, since JOGL disables its OpenGL work based on the query of this property.
This and other properties on the Beans class should be per-AppContext, if it is acceptable to add a tie between the Beans class and the sun.awt package. If not then some other way of scoping the query should be invented.
One bug report describing the problem can be seen at
http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=127935