Any good GUI design/prototyper tools?

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Danny - 11 Jul 2003 09:30 GMT

I'm looking for a tool that will let me quickly design/prototype Swing
GUI layouts so I can get screenshots for review by end users. The
emphasis is on design, not building as such - I'm not interested in
*using* any generated code at this stage, although the tool needs to
be able to save and load layouts, and preview the layouts.

What is really required is something that works like a drawing program
but with Swing components. Ideally it would:

o Allow absolute positioning and sizing, because at this stage I'm
essentially doing graphic design and don't want to be worrying about
implementation of layout managers

o Allow easy moving and alignment of elements or groups of elements

o Have a Property Editor, but with configuration of defaults so that I
don't have to, for example, change the font on every element.

o Have a quick build/preview so I can get screenshots easily.

I have looked at a few IDEs and GUI builder tools, but so far nothing
seems really orientated towards making this particular task quick and
easy. Does anyone know of anything that's appropriate... or should I
be thinking about coding something myself?

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Vano D - 14 Jul 2003 01:17 GMT

> I'm looking for a tool that will let me quickly design/prototype Swing
> GUI layouts so I can get screenshots for review by end users. The
> emphasis is on design, not building as such - I'm not interested in
> *using* any generated code at this stage, although the tool needs to
> be able to save and load layouts, and preview the layouts.

[...]

> Does anyone know of anything that's appropriate... or should I
> be thinking about coding something myself?

I am also in a similar situation as yourself. After some investigation
I came to the following two conclusions:

- http://www.jgoodies.com/ - The Forms classes. Not what you want
but you design a GUI using very little simple code and end up with
something very nice. Making a frontend to automate the code generation
should not be that complicated. And the libraries are BSD license,
very neat. This same idea can also be applied to the xml->gui system
which is out there (dont have the link, since it didn't interest me
much)

- http://uic.sourceforge.net/ - You use Qt's designer to design
forms and this program converts it directly to Swing code. Very neat,
although I tried it and couldn't get to do much with it (errors
etc..but I didn't look too much into it).

My choice is the jgoodies' Forms classes and I am also thinking of
making a GUI "paint" program myself, but if you get to do it
beforehand and think of making it GPL or something, let me know :)

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Kleopatra - 16 Jul 2003 14:02 GMT

Hi Danny,

just a few comments/questions - recently I looked for something similar
and could not find anything that suited my needs.

IMO generated code is not the optimal output from such a tool, all
that's needed is a description of the layout/presentation that can be
used by the preview (and later by the prototype/application) to build
the gui.

> What is really required is something that works like a drawing program
> but with Swing components. Ideally it would:
>
> o Allow absolute positioning and sizing, because at this stage I'm
> essentially doing graphic design and don't want to be worrying about
> implementation of layout managers

Thinking about it the drawing program metaphor is not the best: usually
you want to position/align/size components relativ to each other to
create a good looking ui. So usually designer tools (f.i. qt designer)
use a grid to place components. I don't like those general grids for
several reasons:

a) they are defined in pixels and then far too fine grained - all
components do span many rows/columns of the grid. As a consequence
mis-alignment is easy to achieve...
b) the grid cannot be defined in the vocabulary of the UI: I would like
to define it semantically in terms of rows/columns of content
(=components) and gaps (=spacing between components). As a consequence
the alignment/size/.. comes for free, components just fill their
"component cell" (spanning several rows/columns has to be possible, of
course, but not the rule)

FormLayout does define such a component-oriented grid - what's needed is
a visual builder that feeds it. Incidentally I'm in the process of
writing one :-)

> o Allow easy moving and alignment of elements or groups of elements

what exactly would qualify for "easy"? Selecting and moving by keyboard
navigation as well as dragging them around with the mouse?

> o Have a Property Editor, but with configuration of defaults so that I
> don't have to, for example, change the font on every element.

in the context of swing that would mean editing the properties of the
UIManager, right? Nice idea.

> o Have a quick build/preview so I can get screenshots easily.
>
> I have looked at a few IDEs and GUI builder tools, but so far nothing
> seems really orientated towards making this particular task quick and
> easy. Does anyone know of anything that's appropriate... or should I
> be thinking about coding something myself?

I'm pretty sure that my builder will be very near to what you need -
currently it's in the proof-of-concept phase.

Greetings
Jeanette

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linask - 24 Jul 2003 20:49 GMT

Jvider Swing GUI builder ( http://www.jvider.com/ ) may be useful for
you.
With Jvider you can design GUI screen by dragging and dropping
components, and preview the result immediately. The design can be
saved in XML format.

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Kumaravel - 24 Feb 2008 02:46 GMT

Hello,
We have released DesignerVista, the GUI Prototype design software for Windows
Software Professionals. Please visit http://www.designervista.com for more
information about the features, screenshots, demos etc. Thanks.

Regards,
Kumaravel Somasundaram
www.designervista.com
The GUI Design Software for Windows and Web.

>> I'm looking for a tool that will let me quickly design/prototype Swing
>> GUI layouts so I can get screenshots for review by end users. The
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>components, and preview the result immediately. The design can be
>saved in XML format.

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Any good GUI design/prototyper tools?

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