IDE for Swing [closed]

Question

Like others have mentioned, NetBeans' visual editor is pretty good, but it's based pretty heavily on the Swing Application Framework, so you'd need to get an understanding of how it works to properly use it (although you don't need to dig in to just test things).

Other than that there are also:

• the IntelliJ IDEA visual editor (flash demo of the features)
• and Eclipse's Visual Editor

Personally I've used NetBeans' and IDEA's visual editors. Both are nice, but I thought NetBeans had a leg up, because it doesn't use any proprietary way of saving the GUI structure and instead does something similar to what Visual Studio does - auto-generating the code that you can then add to. IDEA stores the information in a separate file which means you have to use IDEA to edit the layout visually later.

I have not used Eclipse's Visual Editor.

My vote is for NetBeans' visual editor. I think it satisfies what most people are looking for in a visual editor and leaves it flexible enough to plug the holes manually through code without affecting the visual editor (so you can switch back and forth between code and design views without breaking either).

I like the Swing GUI Builder from the NetBeans IDE.

For me, the best visual Swing editor is JFormDesigner, which you can run standalone or as a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse.

It generates proper (actually readable) source code, it's very ergonomic and intuitive and, above all, very extensible. That last point is really important, because if you want to build a decent Swing application, you'll have to extend the base components or use some third-party libraries and it must be easy to integrate those in the visual editor.

It's not free, but it's a bargain for the power you get (129 EUR / 159 USD). I've been using it for a few years and love it.

There are two that you can use (I've used them both, and they are both very powerful, and easy to use):

• NetBeans which has a built in GUI Builder.

Or you can use:

• Eclipse with the Windowbuilder plugin
  • (it can be downloaded here and here)

Personally, I prefer Eclipse with Windowbuilder, but that's just me. You can use either one.

Here is a picture of the Windowbuilder plugin:

And here is a picture of NetBeans' built in GUI Builder:

Netbeans has some GUI-building support, and it's one of the most popular Java IDEs on the market. Give it a look.

Try Instantiations' Windows Builder Pro. It includes Swing Designer, which is a Swing UI builder. It is based on Eclipse.

Abeille is very good and is based on the JGoodies FormLayout. Unlike almost every other Java GUI builder, Abeille does not generate code by default. In the project I used it on, it was wonderful to avoid reading or scrolling through the layout code (because that code no longer existed). Most of our hand-written code concerned itself with connecting events to actions, simply asking the layout for the relevant controls.

It's a crime that code generation is the default way to layout code in Java because better ways of doing GUIs have been around for decades. I have used Matisse, the NetBeans GUI code generator. While Matisse (now known as "Swing GUI Builder") makes it pleasant to layout components, it is similar to all other code generation tools because when you use Matisse you must live in constant fear that someone else edited the "you cannot edit this in NetBeans" GUI sections outside of NetBeans. As soon as you touch the layout builder again it could destroy their work and then you have a broken GUI. There might be some simple task like re-ordering a variable initialization and its use or re-naming a variable (this was especially a problem when using Matisse's database feature). You know how to do this by editing the un-editable source code but may waste time trying to figure out how to do the same thing in the GUI builder. Like most code generation tools, it might get you started, but eventually you will have to maintain the generated code yourself.