IntelliJ's IDEA

[Gary kristen]

Hi,
I have to evaluate Some IDEs for JFC/Swing development. IDEA seems to be the cheaper option athan JBuilder. But I couldn't find any support for JFC/Swing Development (e.g. Layout Managers, DnD of components).
Any ideas Please.

[Craig Demyanovich]

Based on my experience with JBuilder 5 Enterprise and IDEA 2.6 and 3.0, I've concluded that IDEA is by far the superior IDE for me. However, it does lack a GUI builder. Since I haven't needed to create any GUIs, though, that feature or lack thereof has not figured in my comparison. NetBeans includes a GUI builder, and it's free. Sun's Sun One is based on NetBeans. You could try them or search the web for a stand-alone GUI builder; I've run across one once before, but I don't remember where or when.
Good luck,
Craig

[David Weitzman]

I wanted to try the IDEA evaluation version, but unfortunately it seems to put my computer through an impressive crash every time I try to create or open a project. Since I've never heard anyone mention this problem before, I assume it just happens because my computer sucks. What a shame. Anyway, I'm not in a position to comment and have just made a completely useless post.

[Tracy Woo]

Well, you are not alone, David I had that problem too. Other than that, it had a repaint problem that is so common to java based GUIs. Agreed, it is feature packed and good looking but only when it's not doing anything
I tried Eclipse again after Ilja's recommendation and so far it looks good. It's GUI is definitely crisp and responsive. I am using the Lamboz plugin for JSP/Servlet, which is a pain to configure. Although I have been able to get it working, I still haven't got a complete handle on it.

[Craig Demyanovich]

I haven't experienced any problems with IDEA 2.6 or 3.0 on my work machine: Windows 2000 and later Windows XP Professional. IDEA 2.6 works on Mac OS X 10.1.x at home. Post more info so that someone might be able to help you. By the way, I like Eclipse as well.
Craig

[David Weitzman]

I'm using Windows 98 SE and IDEA 3.0 didn't work. Eclipse works and I use it for development, although it taxes the limited system resources and wouldn't qualify as responsive for me by any standard (it's a several year old laptop with pentium III approx. 550 MHz and 128 megs of RAM. I hate the sound of paging memory). Ah, the joy of hijacking threads.

[Charles DeCroes]

I have had Jbuilder 2,3,4,6, and now JBuilder 8 enterprise. I also have intellij 3.0. I support several swing based applets that were originally built using Jbuilder's gui builder. Both products are very good, I prefer intellij because it promotes good, clean coding. You can't go wrong with either though. Whatever you DO NOT use jbuilders gui builder, it creates the worst code you have ever seen. The code generated is slow, causes memory problems and ties you to their proprietary layout managers.