Best GUI designer (preferable for Eclipse)

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Jamey Bon - 28 Mar 2007 02:56 GMT

Yes, I know that a question like that cannot really be answered. But I
brand new to java GUI design, and I am confused by all the options out
there for a decent GUI designer. Worse, most of the info I have found on
the web is dated.

I gather my choices are NetBeans or Eclipse as far as open source goes.
I have been using Eclipse for non GUI stuff, so I am comfortable with
that IDE. But there are many choices for plugins, and I would like some
feedback on which ones might be the "best."

Some of what I have read indicates that NetBeans is (much) better than
Eclipse for GUI deisign, but that was all somewhat dated, so I would like
an up to date opinion on that.

I greatly appreciate any advice on this subject, and I hope that I avoid
some sort of flame war for bringing something so subjective up in the
first place.

TIA,

JB

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Andrew Thompson - 28 Mar 2007 03:20 GMT

> Sub: Best GUI designer ..

The human brain.

> ..(preferable for Eclipse)

Eclipse is compatible with the human brain.

To put that another way, D'n'D GUI produces
horrid, unmaintainable code that is usuall
'locked in' to whatever 'GUI designer of
the minute' was used to write it.

GUI designers also tend to make the simplest
things easy, while getting in the way of
doing anything *beyond* the trivially simple.

Andrew T.

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Karsten Lentzsch - 28 Mar 2007 08:23 GMT

> [...]
> To put that another way, D'n'D GUI produces
> horrid, unmaintainable code that is usuall
> 'locked in' to whatever 'GUI designer of
> the minute' was used to write it.

One of the design goals of the JGoodies Forms
layout system is to overcome this problem.
Visual designers that support the FormLayout
*can* produce source code that humans can read,
understand, and edit.

> GUI designers also tend to make the simplest
> things easy, while getting in the way of
> doing anything *beyond* the trivially simple.

That's a tendency; however, some designers help
in some use cases. It seems that many developers
cannot *find* a good design easily, where they
can *implement* it quite well - by hand or with
a visual designer. An interactive layout environment
(hand or visual designer or whatever) can assist
in finding good design via previews, instant preview,
etc.

I personally can find good design with paper and
pencil drafts quickly; see the "Visual Design Draft" at
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/bookfinder/makingof.html
I start "editing" a mental design before I put
the first draft on paper. That's the majority of
the design work. After implementing a visual design,
I tweak it by hand.

So, I'd say visual designers have their role
and can add real value for some developers.
In my opinion the JFormDesigner is an example
for a well done visual designer; it has a plugin
for Eclipse. Another good designer is the one
that comes with IDEA.

-Karsten

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Best GUI designer (preferable for Eclipse)

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