Best Swing Development Environment

[Aleksey Serov]

What free software can you recommend to support development of SWING application under Windows?

I have read about few plugins for eclipse but failed to find where to download it from. I have eclipse indigo installed.

Maybe not eclipse, maybe some standalone application or something else.

[John Jai]

I use NetBeans to draw the initial layout of the components, copy the generated GroupLayout code and use Eclipse further to add Listeners and other stuffs further. Please use generated code by NetBeans only if you understand the GroupLayout.

[Karthik Shiraly]

Netbeans was the better IDE in this matter till a few months ago, and John's technique above was what I used to do too.
But now I use Google's WindowBuilder Pro eclipse plugin if the entire system is being developed in eclipse - it's very capable and brings swing development in Eclipse on par with Netbeans.

Additionally, you may also want to use SwingX and JXLayer frameworks - they provide controls and behaviours that any good application framework should have but is unfortunately missed in Swing.

[Haris Tasawar]

If your using eclipse... then use windowsbuilder pro

[Haina Minawa]

Aleksey Serov wrote:What free software can you recommend to support development of SWING application under Windows?

I have read about few plugins for eclipse but failed to find where to download it from. I have eclipse indigo installed.

Maybe not eclipse, maybe some standalone application or something else.

JIDE is a good framework for Swing applications, however it is not free.

[Haina Minawa]

John Jai wrote:I use NetBeans to draw the initial layout of the components, copy the generated GroupLayout code and use Eclipse further to add Listeners and other stuffs further. Please use generated code by NetBeans only if you understand the GroupLayout.

No one forces me to use GroupLayout, I am still using NetBeans without GroupLayout, and everything is fine!

[naved momin]

John Jai wrote:I use NetBeans to draw the initial layout of the components, copy the generated GroupLayout code and use Eclipse further to add Listeners and other stuffs further. Please use generated code by NetBeans only if you understand the GroupLayout.

nb is good but i face a nasty problem with nb is that , when i run 1st jframe and run another jframe within that project the next frame which is about to appear is blur it has contains or pics of code above all over its frame area

can any one recommend me a good GUI builder free & open source for netbeans or as a stand alone thing

[Randall Twede]

you are all very lazy. just use the command prompt

just kidding, but really......

[Rob Spoor]

Why just kidding? I agree with you that user interface should be written manually. I definitely don't use any GUI builder for my Java code.

[Ranganathan Kaliyur Mannar]

I use NB - but instead of using GroupLayout, I use the usual layouts with nested panels. When using a tool like NetBeans, I am able to develop slightly faster. It has a nice 'preview' feature to help...

[Haina Minawa]

Rob Spoor wrote:Why just kidding? I agree with you that user interface should be written manually. I definitely don't use any GUI builder for my Java code.

Oracle/Sun may not like your opinion, since they have been invested in developing NetBeans.
And don't use any GUI builder is appropriate for beginners only. For veterans, not using GUI builder is a good news for your competitors. You lose your productivity.

[Rob Spoor]

There are many people who disagree with you on that last part. If I recall correctly, Rob Camick, Maneesh Godbole and Darryl Burke don't use any GUI builders, and I like to see them as some of the most experienced Swing developers we have around the Ranch. Someone with good knowledge of Swing can produce excellent user interfaces that don't take much longer to create, but will be easier to maintain because no GUI builder has created a horrible mess of the code. I've seen GroupLayout code generated by GUI builders; I'm not even going to try to make any sense of it.

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

It becomes really hard to understand the code generated by the IDE. And the code at times is not flexible, you cant get the kind of structure you would want for your application. I remember using Netbeans for GUI building and for editing the auto-generated code I had to open the file in the notepad++ and then make the changes.
My first project using Swing was done using Eclipse without a GUI builder and it came out really well. Though using builders makes it easy but you really dont have a hold over the gui code.

[Horst Stieg]

Haina Minawa wrote:For veterans, not using GUI builder is a good news for your competitors. You lose your productivity.

As a veteran, at some time you probably had to build a large application consisting of many frames with different contents, but always with the same layout. Where every label etc. had to be at exactly the same horizontal position, the spacing between components had to be always the same... And you did this with a GUI builder?
That is work for an intern or someone deserving some kind of punishment!

[Haina Minawa]

Horst Stieg wrote:

Haina Minawa wrote:For veterans, not using GUI builder is a good news for your competitors. You lose your productivity.

As a veteran, at some time you probably had to build a large application consisting of many frames with different contents, but always with the same layout. Where every label etc. had to be at exactly the same horizontal position, the spacing between components had to be always the same... And you did this with a GUI builder?
That is work for an intern or someone deserving some kind of punishment!

You can copy & paste the same code. In my opinion, using a GUI builder is always better than not. Frankly, I am very good at coding GUI without builder but I still use NetBeans for productivity.

[Paul Clapham]

Horst Stieg wrote:As a veteran, at some time you probably had to build a large application consisting of many frames with different contents, but always with the same layout. Where every label etc. had to be at exactly the same horizontal position, the spacing between components had to be always the same... And you did this with a GUI builder?
That is work for an intern or someone deserving some kind of punishment!

If the intern decides to write a code generator to produce those frames, he or she is the one you should make sure to hire.

[Randall Twede]

i am pleased that Rob agrees with me. IMO he is a GUI expert since he has helped me several times recently, and his advice was always correct.

i can see that with a large project i might want to use an IDE, but for what i am doing it is easier to use command prompt and notepad. besides, it is good practice to decipher the compiler errors rather than have them pointed out to you.