1) You should try Swing Designer (companion to GWT Designer). It is completely bi-directional and reads and writes Java Swing code from almost any source. I agree with you that tools that write to an extra (redundant) XML file don't "cut it". In fact, the mere existence of those intermediate files (which routinesly get lost) make them dangerous and leave you with severe vendor lock in. A tool like Swing Designer, in contrast, can read and write code written by any other GUI builder and can reverse engineer 80-90% of code written by hand. It provides support for dozens of code generation styles so you can tune it to match yoru own style very easily. CodeGear, for example, OEMs it for JBuilder 2008, and its code gen defaults in that environment are set to match historical JBuilder code gen patterns.
2) The revserse engineering ability of GWT Designer makes it an ideal tool for experimenting with GWT layouts. You can use the tool to mock up a layout, look at the generated code, tweak the generated code almost any way that you like, and then immediately see the effect in the design view (w/o needing to constantly go in and out of hosted mode). 3) Unfortunately, there is little or no marked for Intellij add-ons, so for now, GWT Designer will remain an Eclipse-only tool (plus JBuilder, MyEclipse, Rational, BEA, etc.). On Oct 20, 9:54 am, gregor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I hand code as well. I have three main reasons for this: > > 1) I used to write Swing stuff and found Swing GUI builders just > didn't cut it, especially those that used intermediate XML files, > largely because Swing's layout managers are difficult to represent as > WYSIWYG in an IDE, organizing nested panel structures so I could see > what was what was more trouble than it was worth, and I hated the way > they wrote Java code. So I got used to writing GUI code by hand. > 2) I found GWT to be much the same in the sense that the browsers were > in control of layout, with the added spice that each browser is apt to > behave slightly differently even with GWT. So hand coding enabled me > to work out exactly how they worked, put me in control, enabled me to > structure my GUI code as I wanted, and enabled me to find out things > about how GWT worked I wouldn't have done if a GUI builder had done it > for me. > 3) I use Intellij IDEA for whichGWT Designeris not available so, > partly because of the above two reasons, there is no way I would > change back to Eclipse for the sake of a GWT GUI builder no matter how > good it was. In that respect I'm biased, and I would probably have > test drivenGWT Designerhad I been an Eclipse user, and I can't > really say if I would have continued to use it. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Web Toolkit" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
