TorNorbye wrote: > GroupLayout by itself is extremely hard to use. BUT, it was built with > toolability in mind - and when used with NetBeans it works well. > > I don't think anyone developing UIs should be writing layout code by > hand. > My personal experience is: I had a great enthusiasm when I first faced with UI design tools, and it was circa 1997/1998 after hearing some presentation about VisualCafe. After using it for a few months, I completely gave up with visual designers and stayed with code for several years. Even JBuilder didn't satisfy me (in spite of being a great tool for that time in other respects) and every time I tried a new visual designer I backed off after a few days. I had a big negative bias when Matisse come out, but I later changed my mind and I'm fine with it. I think it's mostly subjective, but GUIs are a visual thing and I find that the most natural way to design them is with a visual tool. I think that the programmatic approach is still popular because we are programmers, but as the melting pot with visual designers that is being created by Flex, JavaFX and Silverlight grews, the visual approach will get more and more popular.
BTW, I'm pretty fine with creating GUIs with Matisse that resize themselves when needed. The tool has got sometimes rough edges, but with a bit of experience you manage them perfectly. I can't see the missing 10% effect with Matisse, and I'd like whether people arguing about it would elaborate more with some example (it might be that they design much more complex GUIs than me). If there's a critic to Matisse is that, if used in brainless mode, it tends to generate bloated controller code in the same class (e.g. by generating listeners by double clicking on a button or such). But it's just a matter of discipline of the programmer - as usual, for having a good design. -- Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/blog [email protected] - mobile: +39 348.150.6941 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" 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/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
