Re: newbie
JB wrote:
...
I may be being naive here, but it appears that there is no GUI
designer in Eclipse allowing me to drag and drop controls onto a blank
form,
AFAIU there are plug-ins available for Eclipse.
NetBeans has 'Matisse'.
..am I right in this, is it a requirement to create all controls
manually in code? (I am not complaining here, just trying to
understand).
D'n'D' GUI designers do not work nearly as well with
Java as they perhaps do with .NET. The reason is
because Java compopnents might be rendered on any
number of OS's, with any number of default font sizes,
across different Java versions and PLAF's (pluggable
look and feel), the 'put it here' style designers will often
result in overlapping components* on other machines.
* Or any number of other problems.
Instead, Java has a number of layouts designed to
arrange components in ..
- grids over a container,
- around the borders of a container, or
- flowing from left to right, top to bottom
(as a few examples) that are combined to organise
the GUI and ensure that it is the right size for any
set of desktop constraints.
These layouts do not lend themselves as well to the
D'n'D 'put the component here' style GUI desingers.
(I speak as someone who does not use the
D'n'D style layout designers, and feels they
are rather limiting and kludgy - others swear
by them.)
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