Best way to build Java Swing GUI?

Question

Till now, I had been using Netbeans Swing GUI generation feature to build GUI for my java applications.

Now I have started using Eclipse for my projects and have dropped Netbeans. So apart from coding manually all the code for GUI, what are the other ways with which I can build GUI quickly and in a much better way.

Answer 1

I have been using Visual Editor and Windows Builder plugin for eclipse IDE since last 2 years. I found Windows Builder works perfect! It provides very clean and highly readable code for you. So i prefer to use Windows Builder, so that you can do everything what ever you found in Microsofts Visual Studio features "drag and drop and all".

Answer 2

You can keep coding it manually but using GroovyBuilders (link) that are enough faster than using plain java but you will need to embed Groovy lib inside your application..

otherwise there exists a layout manager, called MIG Layout, that works quite well (it's much more practical that normal gui building)..

I also used a tool called JVider to build some simple applications, but using a visual approach you get always the same nasty thing: keeping interface and backend synchronized, considering also the "bindings" between visual objects and variables name..