GUI Builder

[Santiago Bravo]

Hi,

question for those who have experience in building GUIs...do you use any GUI builders?

Is it better to code GUIs from scratch?


Thanks

[pete stein]

Originally posted by Santiago Bravo:
question for those who have experience in building GUIs...do you use any GUI builders?

Is it better to code GUIs from scratch?

Hello Santiago, I'd like to answer your question with a question: What's your experience with Swing GUI and what's your goal?

If your experience is limited and your goal is to learn how to code in Swing, then I feel strongly that you should avoid use of GUI builders and instead learn from to build from scratch. It's been my experience in these and other forums that newbies who build GUIs with code-generation software learn Swing coding at a much slower rate than those who don't. Sure they can slap an app together quickly and easily, but eventually they'll want to modify that app, and often they're so clueless (through no fault of their own) as to not be able to understand the recommendations that we give them.

If your experience with Swing is quite extensive and you want to build quick GUI apps that you probably won't be maintaining for a long time, then by all means, use a GUI builder.

For the folks in between, I still recommend building most apps from scratch, but I'm not as dogmatic about it.

[Andre Uhres]

I use the NetBeans Gui builder, but coding from scratch is better for advanced features.

[pete stein]

Originally posted by Andre Uhres:
I use the NetBeans Gui builder, but coding from scratch is better for advanced features.

But I'm guessing that you are already quite familiar with Swing programming, correct?

[Andre Uhres]

Originally posted by pete stein:
But I'm guessing that you are already quite familiar with Swing programming, correct?

Correct. I wouldn't recommend a Gui builder for beginners.

[Santiago Bravo]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies.

Basically im a beginner in GUI building. The reason I asked about GUI builders is that I need to create a few GUIs for a client. I thought it would be much quicker to use a GUI builder.

[pete stein]

Oh, I'm sure that it will be quicker to create them, but again watch out when it's time to extend or maintain them!

But here's an idea: try doing it from scratch with the assistance of the Sun Swing tutorials, and then come back here w/ your questions if you get stuck. That's how I learned.