Hi guys, I was wondering if there was a good interface builder for java out there. It would be nice if it is Eclipse-based, as I'm using that program to write the rest of the program. I just have this problem with swing, if i see it, i can understand it, and modify it to fit my preferences, but writing an interface out of the blue is still too difficult. Ideally it should have a WYSIWYG window and a generated code window, so i can view them together and see what I do if i modify one or the other. Or am I being difficult right now? alpaca
NetBeans has a GUI builder, but 9 times out of 10 writing your own GUI will lead to much better code. Like NetBeans will try to use the GridBag layout manager, which is good, very powerful layout manager, but if your new to Java it can prove quite complicated. As well as this it has hell of a lot of wasted code. Like say you want a panel, with a grid layout in, and in one cell of the grid you want a border layout. Well to do that properly is 6 or 7 lines of code, but when NetBeans does it on the other hand, it starts using absolute positioning and all sorts. Try drawing you GUI, then split the different sections into panels, and try and work out the layout managers from that. The most common mistake people get is calling the "add" method for the various components in the wrong order.
Mindsilver? You may also want to look at Mindsilver GUIDE. I will mention that I am one of the authors, but GUIDE was written using itself, so there's nothing that can't be done in it. Regards, Brendon.
