quote:Original post by NuffSaid
I'm interested to know how most people design the GUI in Java? Do you use GUI builders like Netbeans, or do you manually code them?

I've been writing GUIs in Java using Layout Managers, specifically BoxLayout, and quite frankly, its never caught on with me. GUI builders I've tried seem to work best when using the NULL layout. Using any other layout in a GUI builder just doesn't seem to work. I'm interested if anyone else feels that layout managers are a pain to use, and if there are any other alternatives?

[edited by - NuffSaid on December 7, 2002 7:50:56 PM]

It depends on what I am doing. If I am writting something more complex I'll use a program like JBuilder (personal edition) and draw GUI like you do in VB, but if it's simple I'll just write the code to use the layout managers myself.


I agree layout managers can be a pain, but I am unaware of any other way to setup a GUI with Java.


Sorry about the double post


[edited by - prh99 on December 13, 2002 10:42:56 PM]

It maybe comfortable to you, the programmer, to put yourself the layout of the components without the aid of the managers. But remember your users probably won''t have the resolution you have, that''s the objective of the managers, handle the resizing for you. Believe me, your user will thank you if you have a program that does this. (Not like VB applications I did a long time ago, which you maximized but the components stood with the same size ¬_¬)

With the other question, I use Forte to do all the GUI part, I love using an IDE, it saves me so much time doing the GUI, and it does what I want, I really don''t understand the people who say the opposite. Perhaps the IDE

I also use JCreator for the non-GUI parts, mostly because it''s faster than Forte.