Java AWT/SWT/Swing: How to plan a GUI?

Question

I\'ve already realized some applications with a small graphical user interface. Nothing complex, but I\'ve encountered several problems that components aren\'t displayed or

Answer 1

I for myself use

Pencil

for some prototyping first, then start coding "by hand" (i.e. not using any GUI editor).

Answer 2

While NetBeans' Matisse editor is admittedly handy, the code it produces is fairly esoteric and the layouts are fragile. So I've been taking best of both worlds, using NetBeans for WYSIWYG prototyping and then later recoding the whole thing by hand.

Answer 3

I use JFormDesigner for gui generation. It generates nice clean java code, and I've learned a few things from reading through the generated code. Makes localization a snap.

It's a really quick way to throw together an involved layout, especially complex menubars and grid layouts.

Answer 4

There has been a temporarily-dead (but now apparently at least half-alive) plugin for Eclipse for visual GUI design and Netbeans still has support for it. The resulting code was less than stellar, though. At least for people having to work with that codebase afterwards it's quite a pain.

As for me I tend to plan on paper beforehand and try to get all nestings of panels with their layouts right on the first try. Java GUI code is inherently write-only in my experience.

Last time I did such a thing I first created every control I needed and then pieced it together in multiple panels and layouts, etc. That way was at least manageable and worked without too much pain when changes had to be made.

I tend not to think too much about the particular layout in Winforms and WPF due to the, as you noted also, strong designer support. Also WPF is very easy to handle even in XAML. Ans partial classes make working with partly designer-generated and partly handwritten code very pleasant. Alas, no such thing in the Java world.