Eclipse Window Builder VS Netbeans GUI Builder [closed]

Question

I would start a J2SE projects for abuntu OS. I try both Netbeans GUI builder and Eclipse windowbuilder.

Both of them are good, drag&drop, double-click to create event-handler like VisualStudio.

However i have do a research on Netbeans, someone said:

The second major flaw of Matisse is that it just isn't good enough, you place the components on the grid, Matisse then creates an XML with the component's attributes, then generates the java code for the components on the grid. Seems cool, but then you decide you want to add a button somewhere in the form or resize a component - this procedure can cause all of the gui to get mixed up throwing the adjacent components to different places - fixing it can be a pain in the neck. Even if you managed to place all of the components where they should be but manually changed some of the generated netbeans code - you are in a BIG problem, a problem you might not manage to get out of unless starting all over.

Is that bug still exist on latest netbeans? What is Pros. and Cons. between Netbeans GUI builder and Eclipse Windowbuilder?

Answer 1

Im using NetBeans since 6.x and never had such problems. Resizing components, adding some new, even working on the generated code etc. is realy easy and had no problem so far. Moreover NB has a visual debugger and an improved GridBagLayout customizer (both since 7.1).

Didn't use Eclipse Windowbuilder so far, but i guess its capable too. Everyone has it's own criteria for a gui builder. Btw. the author of this article seem very eclipse-focused ("on the best IDE out there - eclipse")

I'm sorry i cant give you an answer like "pro / cons of A, pro / cons of B" - as i said i've never used Eclipse Windowbuilder before. And for me there's no need to do so, i can build a gui with netbeans without problems / very easy / fast (even better than with Visual Studio). For my point of view everything works like i want it :-)

If you used both, maybe there are things you prefer or dislike on one IDE, but the other can do better.

Answer 2

Personally, while WindowBuilder is a pretty powerful tool to use within Eclipse, I find it more clunky (and quite honestly, prefer to write Swing GUIs by hand if this were the only optin)

Matisse is a far better option because of the Grid editors like someone mentioned previously, also I prefer the way Matisse handles event handlers over WindowBuilder. Another thing Matisse does well is that it encorporates more properties into GUI element settings where WindowBuilder goes over a very small list of changeable features (leaving you to dive through a mess of auto-generated code to change a simple property).

Eclipse does have a version of matisse available, though the plugin is not for free (look up myeclipse).