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Java Forum / GUI / February 2004

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[ANN] SwingEmpire FormBuilder - Preview 0.9.2

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Kleopatra - 25 Feb 2004 15:24 GMT
Thanks to many detailed comments and helpful suggestions the FormBuilder
went through  a  visual/usability overhaul while the core functionality
remained stable:

SwingEmpire FormBuilder helps in quickly building GUIs with JGoodies
Forms.

Features

   * rapid visual design of form-oriented GUIs
   * targeted on JGoodies Forms
   * re-usable layout data
   * immediate preview in choosable LookAndFeels
   * persisting layout data separated from application code
   * persisting via standard XMLEncoder
   * pluggable custom components
   * pluggable persistence format

The preview is available at

http://www.swingempire.de/palace/FormBuilder

Test and (hopefully :-) enjoy - I'm eagerly awaiting your feedback.

Regards
Jeanette Winzenburg, Berlin
Vilya Harvey - 28 Feb 2004 15:02 GMT
> Thanks to many detailed comments and helpful suggestions the FormBuilder
> went through  a  visual/usability overhaul while the core functionality
> remained stable:

This is the first time I've heard of your program. I've just taken a quick
look at it & I must say I'm impressed: at last there's a GUI builder that
does things right! Great work!

I have a few suggestions to improve the usability:

* When the user clicks on a row/column/constraint in the layout builder, the
appropriate properties tab should be selected automatically. For example, if
I click on a column header I would like the column tab to be selected for me.

* Have some toggle buttons on the toolbar for switching between the layout
builder and presentation builder views.

* Consider having the builder toolbars running down the left hand edge of
the window. At the moment the buttons are a little too far away from the
work area and a lot of mouse movement back and forwards between the two is
required.

* At the moment you have to be familiar with the JGoodies constraint syntax
for rows and columns; it would be even better if you didn't have to be. For
example, if you could choose the constraints from a number of drop-downs
(one for alignment, one for size, one for resizing behaviour), that would be
quite helpful.

* Same comment as above applies to borders, too.

* Some of the menu items are a little confusing. I initially thought "Focus
Editor" would bring up a window/view where I could edit the focus order of
the components in the panel (which would be a nice thing to have, BTW).
Changing the text to something like "Move focus to Editor" would make it
clearer.

* Labels should be automatically added to the presentation builder too.

* It should be possible to add a scroll pane to the panel. If it is possible
already, I couldn't figure out how.

That's all I can think of so far. This is a great program already & I hope
that helps make it even better. Thanks for developing it!

Vil.
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Kleopatra - 28 Feb 2004 17:08 GMT
> This is the first time I've heard of your program. I've just taken a quick
> look at it & I must say I'm impressed: at last there's a GUI builder that
> does things right! Great work!

Thanks :-)

> I have a few suggestions to improve the usability:

[... very useful ...]

As I'm literally on the verge to start a vacation I'll postpone the
detailed discussion until I'll come back in three weeks :-) Some of them
(f.i. activating the appropriate property tab) already are on the RFE
list, all of them are very interesting. Thanks a lot for taking the time
to write them down!

> * It should be possible to add a scroll pane to the panel. If it is possible
> already, I couldn't figure out how.

At the moment, there is no possibility to add a standalone scrollpane.
For Components that are usually in a scrollpane, the UIFactory is meant
to wrap them into scrollpane automatically.

Best regards
Jeanette Winzenburg


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