Does Eclipse provide a "Visual Studio" for programming GUIs?

[Ramon F Herrera]

My only Java environment so far has been JBuilder (Developer), and I
was very satisfied with it. Now I see the writing on the wall and am
considering migrating to Eclipse. I just got the Eclipse traditional
download plus Turbo JBuilder 2007 and began playing with them. (cost
is a consideration).

One thing I cannot stand is having to code dialog boxes, buttons, etc.
by typing. One of the features that I like best from the non-Eclipse
versions of JBuilder is the two-way interaction between drawing and
typing source code.

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse. How
can something call itself RAD (*) if it doesn't provide such an
essential tool?

What alternatives do I have for getting a visual studio in:

- Pure (i.e., non Borland) Eclipse
- Borlanized Eclispe

TIA,

-Ramon F Herrera

(*) directed to Borland

 

[Lew]

My only Java environment so far has been JBuilder (Developer), and I
was very satisfied with it. Now I see the writing on the wall and am
considering migrating to Eclipse. I just got the Eclipse traditional
download plus Turbo JBuilder 2007 and began playing with them. (cost
is a consideration).

One thing I cannot stand is having to code dialog boxes, buttons, etc.
by typing. One of the features that I like best from the non-Eclipse
versions of JBuilder is the two-way interaction between drawing and
typing source code.

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse. How
can something call itself RAD (*) if it doesn't provide such an
essential tool?

What alternatives do I have for getting a visual studio in:

NetBeans has the Matisse GUI builder.
www.netbeans.org

- Borlanized Eclispe

What's that?

 

[voorth]

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse.

Up until eclipse 3.2, there is the Visual Editor plugin, which has
actually a similar "round-trip" behaviour as the JBuilder GUI editor.
You can find it under the Callisto updates.

Sadly, VE was not ready for the Europa release, so you won't find it
in the update list.

 

[David Segall]

What alternatives do I have for getting a visual studio in:

- Pure (i.e., non Borland) Eclipse

You need to add the Visual Editor
<http://www.eclipse.org/vep/WebContent/main.php>

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse. How
can something call itself RAD (*) if it doesn't provide such an
essential tool?

Essential? I would say that is arguable. I keep trying gui builders, and
always go back to writing code!

 

[Ramon F Herrera]

NetBeans has the Matisse GUI builder.www.netbeans.org


What's that?

The most recent JBuilder, in all of its versions, is based on Eclipse.
The traditional Eclipse is gone. They have a free, entry level version
called Turbo, and then some expensive packages.

Borland reportedly contributed a lot of source code (don't know
exactly what) to Eclipse and have a seat in the board of directors.

-Ramon

 

[Ramon F Herrera]

NetBeans has the Matisse GUI builder.www.netbeans.org

>
> What's that?
>

The most recent JBuilder, in all of its versions, is based on Eclipse.
The traditional JBuilder is gone. They have a free, entry level
version called Turbo, and then some expensive packages.

Borland reportedly contributed a lot of source code and/or other
resources (don't know exactly what) to Eclipse and have a seat in the
board of directors. Borland claims that they have been involved in the
Eclipse project since day one.

-Ramon

 

[Ramon F Herrera]

> Essential? I would say that is arguable. I keep trying gui builders, and
> always go back to writing code!

Lionel:

With all due respect I say that you probably, either:

- don't value your time
- don't have a sense of aesthetics

(again, no offense).

Perhaps you haven't tried a well-integrated GUI builder? Ever used
JBuilder? In GUIs, sometimes one needs WYSIWYG, i.e., to draw the
program, sometimes one needs to type it. JBuilder provides two way
interaction. Your drawing generates source code, and vice versa. The
two views/perspectives are just tab away from each other.

My first large Java project was to duplicate the look and feel of a
program called Cyclone(*), which had a nice interface, but crappy
internals (was based on Fox Pro, enough said). I wanted to demonstrate
the power and capabilities of Java. I wanted to convince myself and
others that Java could do (1) exactly the same things as the original
non-Java program, and (2) then some.

For step (1), I took a bunch of snapshots of all the dialogs, printed
them on transparent sheets and placed them on top of my screen, and
traced the widgets.

How on earth would you do something like that by typing? The question
is still valid when designing non-cloned interfaces. Sometimes the
dialog is too crowded, and you need to do some careful screen real
state management. They say that some 75% of the brain is dedicated to
the processing of visual information. Should that resource be
neglected?

-Ramon

(*) I called my version "Cyclone-clone" or "Cyclone, Too"

 

[voorth]

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse. How
can something call itself RAD (*) if it doesn't provide such an
essential tool?

What alternatives do I have for getting a visual studio in:

- Pure (i.e., non Borland) Eclipse
- Borlanized Eclispe

The Eclipse Visual Editor Projects provides a nice two-way editor.
Unfortunately, the current version (1.2) does not work with the Europa
release.

Erik Hecht has managed to put an unofficial port together, however:
http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.tools.ve/msg07071.html

 

[Ramon F Herrera]

The Eclipse Visual Editor Projects provides a nice two-way editor.
Unfortunately, the current version (1.2) does not work with the Europa
release.

This is exactly what I mean by "well integrated" (i.e., an inseparable
part of).

When I read the Borland announcement about making JBuilder an
extension of Eclipse, my first thought was that Borland's expertise in
visual tools would be a most welcome contribution to fill the obvious
vacuum in the Eclipse otherwise plethora of tools.

This Europa incompatibility is something that is bound to repeat
itself again and again in future releases.

My guess is that Borland does provide some GUI studio, but they want
some serious money for it.

-Ramon

 

[David Segall]

Perhaps you haven't tried a well-integrated GUI builder? Ever used
JBuilder? In GUIs, sometimes one needs WYSIWYG, i.e., to draw the
program, sometimes one needs to type it. JBuilder provides two way
interaction. Your drawing generates source code, and vice versa. The
two views/perspectives are just tab away from each other.

Was the old JBuilder really capable of doing that? Could you give
JBuilder any Java program and have it generate the WYSIWYG view or
were there constraints on what you could type in the source code tab?

You certainly can't do that with Eclipse/VEP or even NetBeans/Matisse.

 

[mike]

My only Java environment so far has been JBuilder (Developer), and I
was very satisfied with it. Now I see the writing on the wall and am
considering migrating to Eclipse. I just got the Eclipse traditional
download plus Turbo JBuilder 2007 and began playing with them. (cost
is a consideration).

One thing I cannot stand is having to code dialog boxes, buttons, etc.
by typing. One of the features that I like best from the non-Eclipse
versions of JBuilder is the two-way interaction between drawing and
typing source code.

I cannot find anywhere a "studio" for drawing GUIs under Eclipse. How
can something call itself RAD (*) if it doesn't provide such an
essential tool?

What alternatives do I have for getting a visual studio in:

- Pure (i.e., non Borland) Eclipse
- Borlanized Eclispe

TIA,

-Ramon F Herrera

(*) directed to Borland

I used one once call jigloo. It worked for me. http://www.cloudgarden.com/jigloo/

Mike

 

[Ramon F Herrera]

Was the old JBuilder really capable of doing that? Could you give
JBuilder any Java program and have it generate the WYSIWYG view or
were there constraints on what you could type in the source code tab?

No, the old JBuilder cannot display all possible Java programs. It
cannot handle dynamically generated GUIs. The Borland programs have an
initialization section -just like we human programmers write- and any
code relevant to widgets was interpreted and executed.

In any event, all a programmer should care is to have the initial
coordinates looking right to the eye, and then the running programs
may modify things, if required.

In one of my applications, I had a variable number of tabs. The layout
of the tab pane contents was identical, with only the number of them
being variable -and known at run time. I just created (by drawing) a
master, invisible tab, which was later duplicated the desired number
of times.

-Ramon

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

Lionel:

With all due respect I say that you probably, either:

- don't value your time

I do, that's why I start by writing the code myself, rather than using
GUI builders that will eventually require me to edit the code anyway, at
which time I will have to understand what the GUI builder has done.

- don't have a sense of aesthetics

Usability is my top priority.

Perhaps you haven't tried a well-integrated GUI builder? Ever used
JBuilder?

Yes. Eventually wanted to edit the code manually, didn't like the crap
it generated.

GUI builders are find for forms that don't change much, or might have
items added to a table or list, but start moving outside of this with
more dynamic interfaces and I have found I can write code much faster.


Lionel.

 

[Guest]

NetBeans has the Matisse GUI builder.
www.netbeans.org

Is that two-way ?

What's that?

JBuilder 2007 and newer.

Arne

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

The Eclipse Visual Editor Projects provides a nice two-way editor.
Unfortunately, the current version (1.2) does not work with the Europa
release.

Erik Hecht has managed to put an unofficial port together, however:
http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.tools.ve/msg07071.html

Interesting link.

I hope they get VE officially supported in 3.3.

I am not much into GUI programming, but from my little eksperimentation
VE seems as a very nice tool.

Arne

 

[Lew]

...I start by writing the code myself, rather than using
GUI builders that will eventually require me to edit the code anyway, at
which time I will have to understand what the GUI builder has done. ....
Usability is my top priority.

Yes. Eventually wanted to edit the code manually, didn't like the crap
it generated.

GUI builders are find for forms that don't change much, or might have
items added to a table or list, but start moving outside of this with
more dynamic interfaces and I have found I can write code much faster.

Another factor is that different people work differently. Some find graphic
interfaces and tools more efficient; these tools are a good "impedance match"
to how their minds hold the gestalt of the GUI. Others have a good grasp of
GUI structure through the imperatives of the source.

LvdB, would you agree that in your imperative-oriented mindgrok of the GUI you
account for many details not always apparent in the GUI builder, such as
nuances of border placement, interactions of event listeners and so on?

You didn't mention this in detail but I find that the GUI builder approach can
fragment the mental model - you have to click on a widget to view a property
sheet that you scan for the particular attribute and click thereupon to expand
the value. Looking at code the fundamental navigation is up and down in
various increments. With only one navigational dimension, the mind has more
room to integrate the different things expressed directly in the code, and to
correlate factors that a WYSIWYG separates.

For example, dynamic interfaces (that you did mention in detail) might relate
to hooks for logic beans, but the visual editor shows only the control. You
have to click through a few layers to see what logic it hooks in, through more
than one navigational dimension.

Text seems more "bloated" than images ofttimes, but the human brain evolved to
handle linguistic tasks efficiently. The linguistic nature of source code
empowers some people, apparent Messr. van den Berg among them. I count myself
in this set as well.

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

Another factor is that different people work differently. Some find
graphic interfaces and tools more efficient; these tools are a good
"impedance match" to how their minds hold the gestalt of the GUI.
Others have a good grasp of GUI structure through the imperatives of the
source.

LvdB, would you agree that in your imperative-oriented mindgrok of the
GUI you account for many details not always apparent in the GUI builder,
such as nuances of border placement, interactions of event listeners and
so on?

I think you pretty much nailed it there.

In addition to your remaining comments that I snipped, by editing the
source code yourself, it is a design that you've also come up with and
so it is familiar and logical (to yourself, and if well designed, to
other developers). The GUI builder on the other hand is an additional
tool that you need to learn to use and understand so that you think on
the same level.

Horses for courses I guess .

Lionel.