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| http://cloudgarden.com/jigloo/
CloudGarden's Jigloo GUI Builder is a plugin for the Eclipse Java IDE and WebSphere Studio, which allows you to build and manage both Swing and SWT GUI classes.
Jigloo creates and manages code for all the parts of Swing or SWT GUIs as well as code to handle events, and shows you the GUIs as they are being built. Jigloo parses java class files to construct the form that you use when designing your GUI (round-tripping), so it can work on classes that were generated by other GUI builders or IDEs, or hand-coded classes. It can also convert from a Swing GUI to a SWT GUI and vice-versa.
Jigloo is straightforward, fast, powerful, easy to use and fully integrated with Eclipse. It can lead to substantial time-savings for GUI development and maintainance tasks.
Jigloo is highly-customizable: the parts of your code which Jigloo will parse can be restricted, and the classes which are instantiated when Jigloo parses your code and constructs the Form editor can be specified using patterns. The code generated by Jigloo can also be customized, and existing code can be re-arranged to follow the preferred style (eg, using getters for GUI elements, or separating elements by blank lines, braces or tagged comments).
Custom classes can be added to forms, and JavaBeans with Customizers and custom properties are supported. In addition, Jigloo supports visual inheritance - it can design classes which extend other custom classes, which may be public, abstract or non-public. Navigation between code and form editors is very easy - with Jigloo highlighting the relevant section of code when the form editor has focus, or the relevant form element when the code editor has focus.
Components are added, layouts changed etc, by selecting from a palette, or by options in the right-click context menus. They can be resized and dragged about in the form editor and in the outline view, and their properties, layout constraints and event handlers can be changed easily in a properties editor. Multi-selection of components makes widespread changes easy to perform. Class-changing (eg, from a Composite to a Group, a combo-box to a text field, or to any custom class) can also save design time. The GUI can be "previewed" or run using editor actions.
A basic knowledge of the Swing and SWT components is useful, but not essential - and the javadoc can be easily accessed (by a right-click option) directly from the GUI editor. |
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