Swing support

[willwise]

I know that in the past there were plans to release a Swing version. Is this still in the cards? Any ETA on when this might show up? Thanks!

Will

[Eric Clayberg]

I know that in the past there were plans to release a Swing version. Is this still in the cards? Any ETA on when this might show up?

Actually, the Swing version is nearly complete at this point. We plan to start beta testing it next week and (hopefully) selling it in April. The area that most work is focused on right now is in supporting as many code generation styles as possible. We would like to be able to read and edit code generated by JBuilder, NetBeans, VAJ, etc. without modification. We would also like to be able to read and edit any of Sun's hand-written Swing examples. If you've ever looked at Swing code generated by different tools, you know that the existing code gen styles are quite diverse and that Swing itself often provides multiple ways to accomplish the same thing.

The beta will be open to all existing SWT Designer Pro users (and to other users on request).

Click here for some screen shots.

[willwise]

Sounds great! Will instantiation's unique form layout be available when designing Swing interfaces? Also, I appreciate the new non-commercial license which makes the price more amenable to open-source developers. Two-way compatability with other GUI designers like JBuilder and VEP will help to make it more viable in this space as well.

[Eric Clayberg]

Will instantiation's unique form layout be available when designing Swing interfaces?

The SWT FormLayout is unique to SWT, so no. We do plan to eventually support the JDK 1.4 SpringLayout which is similar. We would also like to support the JGoodies FormLayout.

Also, I appreciate the new non-commercial license which makes the price more amenable to open-source developers.

We hope so. We have given away more than 30,000 copies of the free version of SWT Designer, so we hope that the new NC and academic pricing will convince more people to step up and buy the product (and thereby support our ongoing development).

Two-way compatibility with other GUI designers like JBuilder and VEP will help to make it more viable in this space as well.

Yes. The ability to read and write a variety of common formats will hopefully distinguish Designer from all of the other GUI builders out there that generally only read and write their own (often very narrow) formats. As anyone who has experimented with refactoring code generated by SWT Designer already knows, the tool is very resilient to any changes made by hand. We are working very hard to keep it that way and add support as many variations as we can find.