Re: GUI in Swing and layout managers... who will explain sth?

From:

Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:44:29 -0400

Message-ID:

<h1t779$dbr$1@news.eternal-september.org>

Marteno Rodia wrote:

Who will explain me this statement taken from "Swing tutorial"?

However, unless you are using JToolBar, the FlowLayout and
BorderLayout managers are only useful for prototyping. Any real
application will need to reset the layout manager. Again, you should
use an appropriate tool to do this, rather than coding the manager by
hand.

Source: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/layout/using.html

Why it is not recommended to use BorderLayout in the "real
application"?

     Because the Tutorial's authors have prejudices?

     The appearance given by BorderLayout can be fairly
crude, and that of FlowLayout even cruder -- especially
if the elements they arrange have dissimilar geometries.
Other layout managers may produce a pleasanter appearance.
My advice is to use the managers that make sense for what
you want to accomplish, and don't let yourself by hobbled
by someone else's over-broad language.

     I'd extend the same advice to the matter of using a
GUI builder versus hand-coding the layouts. I fooled around
with the NetBeans GUI builder a few years ago and found it
horribly complicated and tedious to use -- it was *far*
easier to write my own Java code for the GUI than to try
to get the builder to do it for me. YMMV.

--
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid