Java, GUI builder or hand coding? [closed]

Answer 1

I personally am a fan of separating the GUI layout from the code (otherwise you end up with the problems you just mentioned). It also seems to be the trend: Microsoft has their XAML, you keep hearing about different view engines for MVC, etc.

Why not go with XML-based GUI design? You could try out something like JFormDesigner which can handle both XML and code-generated layouts.

Answer 2

By using a good builder the development will be a lot faster.

The anxiety you have of not being able to modify the code may be due to you have a lot of logic in the view where it does not belong. Actually this change may help you to move logic from the view which is good precisely for the ability to change the visual elements with out breaking the code.

As per the "unreadable" you should consider use a better GUI generator. I've heard only positive things about NetBeans, and I have used IntelliJ GUI builder whose code is pretty clean.

On both the source code is readable and editable, but only for minor tweaks. For major ones, well use the GUI builder.

I think for a small number of forms, there is no problem in proceeding by hand, but since you have "many of them" as you just said, using this tools will be most beneficial.

Answer 3

I started off as VB programmer and then move on to C#. I would say Netbean GUI builder is still far off Microsoft especially with the layout manager in the form. It get really flustrated when you tried to move buttons and label to be aligned to what you want and those you doesnt want to move icon started moving all around the place.

The auto-generated code also cant be edited in the source which made it even more non-user friendly

Answer 4

I've used many GUI designers over the years (for different languages): Delphi, Visual Studio, JBuilder, Netbeans.

The quality of code they produce and the volume is important. Delphi was fantastic, it produced small amounts of code relative to the form size and the code was easily understandable and the two-way tools allowed you to change generated code with confidence. This was helped by a simply understood GUI library. VS produces reams of code and you do get scared to change it.

Java is partly let down by the language, no delegates or closures and so event based code can quickly become a sprawl.

I would knock up simple stuff with Netbeans Matisse and - once confident - hand code them. The complex stuff is worth planning out and hand coding so that you get your model defined well.

It helps if you build a library of your own GUI components that you can re-use. This is relevant to all languages with GUI libs.

Answer 5

For systems with a lot of simple forms, I've tended to go the XML route -

• define XML files for the information and any work flow for each form
• create XSLT to generate Java/XHTML/whatever code to run the forms on desktop PC/mobile/web
• also create XSLT to generate source code data objects etc.

You can use XForms and implementations thereof, but usually I've been working in places where buying in solutions takes longer than building your own simple XSLT. It generally takes a week to get everything up and running if there aren't too many specialised widgets in the forms. If you make your own code generators, you have full control. If you find you want to switch all your forms from scrolling up/down to be presented in columns, then there is just one place you have to change, rather than changing each form's implementation. (though you could make a framework to abstract form information from presentation in Java, it's not well suited to such declarative programming)

Answer 6

If you have not too complex forms to build, then you could take a look at DesignGridLayout, it is Swing LayoutManager with a fluent API that makes it very easy to write code for your form and easy to read this code (and maintain, I mean modify if needed) and visualize the form through the code.

With DesignGridLayout, one row of components in your form is one line of code. No XML, full compile-time safety. No hard-coded spacing values, alignment... DesignGridLayout handles it all for you.

Short learning curve and as quick to layout a form as a GUI designer!

From the time I have discovered it about 2 years ago, I have used it exclusively (I always have been allergic to GUI designers because of the terrible generated code). That was the reason why I took over the project 8 months ago, because I wanted to give it full potential.