Swing Designer v4.2.0 Released! - 3.2, non-visual beans

[Eric Clayberg]

Major new Swing Designer v4.2.0 release includes support for non-visual beans, Eclipse 3.1.1 & 3.2M2 support, enhanced custom Swing widget & layout manager support, code generation enhancements, plus many other new features.

See the New & Noteworthy page.

Support for Eclipse 3.1.1 & 3.2M2
Support for non-visual beans

- Non-visual beans placed in a "(non-visual beans)" category
- Marked in source with "// @wb:location=X,Y" tag
- Option for creating non-visual beans as fields
- Reorder non-visual beans via drag/drop

:arrow: Enhanced Swing support

- Show value feedback for insets/padding in GBL
- Support for focus traversal policy for Swing
- New "Set tab order" command on container context menu
- Automatically autosize widgets in null and SpringLayout
- New "Flatten Hierarchy" action for Swing container
- Option for changing size to preferred on move in absolute layout
- New "Autosize widget" command for SpringLayout
- Don't show sub-components when "isContainer == FALSE" in bean descriptor
- Support for custom layout managers
- Support for JBuilder XYLayout and XYConstraints
- Support for Swing components from fields
- Mark container as focus cycle root when setting focus policy

:arrow: Code Generation & Parsing enhancements

- Option for specifying default code generation method
- Option to to surround method invocation code with try{}catch{}
- Support for "this" prefix before field
- Option for disabling complex expressions evaluations
- Option for enable/disable reparse after custom component change
- Support for options for position of event handler inner class
- Option for removing "real" event handlers during component remove
- Provide JDK 1.5 versions of ResourceManager as needed
- Ignore during parsing methods that have single argument subclass of EventObject
- Support for components from static factories
- Support for borders from static factories
- Support for adding new controls with complex constructors
- Support for enumeration properties

:arrow: Editor & Property Pane enhancements

- Option for automatically drop down combo property editors on activation
- "Expose property..." item added to property table popup menu
- Option to automatically direct edit new widgets
- New preferences to control visibility of palette categories
- Support for editing layout properties with multi-selection
- Refresh custom components palette after receiving focus
- Support for preferred property descriptors
- Remember expansion state in image selection dialog
- Group constructor properties in complex "constructor" property