Re: newbie
Andrew Thompson wrote:
(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.)
I'm a swear by them person. Matisse is great; it uses the Spring layout
manager which does not have the problems Andrew mentions. All
components are positioned relative to each other. A change in size in
one means the rest are moved logically so they maintain distance and
layout alignment. Top level components are resized appropriately so
that all their sub-components fit.
(Note I don't have nearly Andrew's level of experience, but so far there
are no issues for me with Matisse, given some moderately complex GUI's.)
Eclipse is good but NetBeans is worth knowing also. It handles desktop
apps just fine, and comes with Matisse by default. All you need is the
J2SE JDK and NetBeans and you can jump right in. Matisse is no longer a
"plug in" that you need to download separately. (It still is a plug-in
but it's already "in" by default, if you see my meaning.)