IntelliJ compatibility?

[jill]

Hi,
Our company is using IntelliJ for all of its development work.
We now got a GWT project on our hands and discovered the GWT Designer.
Is there a way to use the GWT Designer as a plugin in IntelliJ - or are there plans to release such a plugin in the near future?
We'd buy at least 7 licenses
Thanks,
Jill

[Eric Clayberg]

GWT Designer is an Eclipse plugin, so it can only be used with Eclipse-based environments like Eclipse, JBuilder, BEA WebLogic, Rational Application Developer, SAP NetWeaver, etc. Those represent ~80% of the Java IDE market. Unfortunately, the market for IntelliJ is too small at this point to support any commercial add-on products like this.

[jill]

Not trying in any way to question your business decisions, but are you sure that 80% of the java users you are trying to address use non-IntelliJ solutions? I'm talking about teams focused on UI design. IntelliJ, in my experience, has a strong appeal to the GUI design crowd, and so for your target demographic the percentage might actually be quite different.

[Eric Clayberg]

are you sure that 80% of the java users you are trying to address use non-IntelliJ solutions?

Yes, quite sure. 80% only accounts for Eclipse-based IDEs. If you add NetBeans (the #2 player), it would be higher than 80%. We have a dedicated tele-sales force who spend their days calling companies doing Java development (without regard to IDE). They rarely encounter any IntelliJ usage, so I would have to say that it is barely on our radar.

I'm talking about teams focused on UI design. IntelliJ, in my experience, has a strong appeal to the GUI design crowd

I have seen no evidence for that relative to other Java IDEs.

I even took a look at the IntelliJ Swing GUI builder and was not that impressed. Better GUI builders are available for Eclipse and NetBeans. The use of proprietary .form files for storing layout info would be a non-starter for most folks.

We occassionally see interest in add-ons for NetBeans, but very rarely see any interest in anything IntelliJ-related. Looking at the list of add-ons available for IntelliJ, there does not appear to be much of a market.