Creating a simple visual user interface

[Arne Vajhøj]

My experience with the latest incarnations of VS express, NetBeans and
Eclipse/IBM RAD (and similar GUI builders like Glade on Linux) is that these
same observations scale to many forms/screens, many widgets, and lots of
handlers. Way back in the day I did write Windows apps and JSP and ASP and
swing/AWT by hand, but those days are over with.

In most environments they are.

But in the Java world GUI builders has never really caught on.

Arne

 

[Andrew Thompson]

..in the Java world GUI builders has never really caught on.*

I have despised GUI builders, historically, but
have been following this thread with interest,
and am almost tempted to try them again, just to
see if I can hate them less this time. (I just
thought I should mention that in case anybody is
left wonderring where my prejudices come from, and
what the 'shades' I might put on the comments mean.)

I am wondering if this (* Arne's comment) comes from
Java being X-Plat and requiring use and understanding
of layouts. It seems GUI builders tend to presume you
want to use 'XYLayout' or 'PreciseLayout' or a
'LeaveItExactlyWhereIDropItLayout'.

This leaves a GUI that might break on the next system,
or the next Java update.

Is my assumption wrong? How do you go about selecting
(and nesting) layouts in a screen based GUI designer?

There has not been much discussion of layouts in the
descriptions of GUI making so far, but perhaps that
was just because it was considered ancillary to the
main point.

Any way you cut it, I would not recommend using a GUI
builder until you have a good understanding of/proficiency
with the core layouts (and widgets) and how to combine them.

Can any of the people who regularly (and successfully)
use GUI builers to produce code, claim they did/do *not*
have that 'proficiency'?

(The reason I press the last point is because I would
never recommend a GUI builder to anyone who wanders in,
asking how to layout a GUI. And my teeth grind every
time someone asks how to get there 'form' to..)

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I have despised GUI builders, historically, but
have been following this thread with interest,
and am almost tempted to try them again, just to
see if I can hate them less this time. (I just
thought I should mention that in case anybody is
left wonderring where my prejudices come from, and
what the 'shades' I might put on the comments mean.)

I am wondering if this (* Arne's comment) comes from
Java being X-Plat and requiring use and understanding
of layouts. It seems GUI builders tend to presume you
want to use 'XYLayout' or 'PreciseLayout' or a
'LeaveItExactlyWhereIDropItLayout'.
>
> This leaves a GUI that might break on the next system,
> or the next Java update.
>
Is my assumption wrong? How do you go about selecting
(and nesting) layouts in a screen based GUI designer?

There has not been much discussion of layouts in the
descriptions of GUI making so far, but perhaps that
was just because it was considered ancillary to the
main point.

I hope that GUI builders today only use standard layout
managers.

My guess is that it is more cultural than technology based.

Java programmers in general do not like to be associated
with the Mort VB6 type of programming.

The "whatever get the job done the cheapest way" is usually
considered second class to the "best way".

Arne

 

[Mark Space]

I hope that GUI builders today only use standard layout
managers.

NetBeans used to use a layout manager that wasn't standard. It was a
regular old Java class, and you had to make sure the jar file was on
your classpath when your program ran. Confusing for neophytes, not so
much if you understand jar files and classpaths.

Now Sun has included the required classes for the NetBeans GUI builder
in the standard JRE, since 1.5 (iirc). (There's two, now, I think, the
older Spring LayoutManager and the newer Group LayoutManger.) So
there's nothing to do now, it just all works.

If your JRE is 1.4 or earlier, you might have to pack up some classes in
a jar file and add it to the classpath.