IBM has donated code to form a "Visual Editor Project" to be housed by the Eclipse consortium. This tool is designed to sit on top of both Swing and SWT, abstracting those APIs. Currently Swing is supported, with SWT coming soon, with help from Advanced Systems Concepts, Instantiations, and Red Hat.

This is an interesting step, and could put to rest some of the "Swing vs. SWT" tension between IBM and Sun, and may pave the way for Sun to join Eclipse.

IBM donates code to open-source project

Eclipse boosting open source GUI-building

Press Release: Eclipse Launches Visual Editor Project

A good quality and responsive UI designer is needed for SWT/Swing.

Now I will have no reason to use JBuilder :)

>
> Now I will have no reason to use JBuilder :)

go to http://www.swt-designer.com/

It might be exactly what you want and it's free. If you need a Swing-based GUI builder, use NetBeans for the time being...

I'm sorry. It's NOT FREE. It has been, previously, I think... my bad.

> > A good quality and responsive UI designer is needed for SWT/Swing.
> >
> > Now I will have no reason to use JBuilder :)
>
> go to http://www.swt-designer.com/
>
> It might be exactly what you want and it's free. If you need a Swing-based GUI builder, use NetBeans for the time being...

jbuilder 10?
eclipse ?
intellij IDEA 4?..

$40 Mil in grant from IBM to eclipse. Unbelievable. What is the difference between Microsoft giving away things for free and what IBM is doing?

Ummm, maybe because a MS OS is required to run "free" MS software. I can run Eclipse on Fedora, Windows, etc.

>Posted By: B K on November 19, 2003 @ 12:39 PM
>
>$40 Mil in grant from IBM to eclipse. Unbelievable. What is the difference >between Microsoft giving away things for free and what IBM is doing?

Nice try. Not very convincing though. Try this on for good measure.

Not that I am complaining. I use Eclipse myself.

Sandeep.

The subjective data doesn't match the objective data in the referenced article. I'm supposed to look at a survey of 5372 aggregate respondents and extrapolate that Eclipse is taking over the Java IDE world. Sorry, not buying that one based on your reference data. Do I believe IBM is trying to undermine Sun, JBuilder, etc.? Sure I do.

The previous poster asked what the difference was between MS and IBM giving stuff away for free. The big difference is that Eclipse doesn't lock me into a desktop platform. That's the difference, I didn't say anything about ulterior motives.

>Nice try. Not very convincing though. Try this on for good measure.

>Not that I am complaining. I use Eclipse myself.

>Sandeep.

MS drove netscape out of business with this kind of business practice and IBM is doing the same, driving out of business some smaller companies in the name of Open Source and Free software. Microsoft is termed monopoly because of this reason. IBM is doing same as microsoft expect that IBM is very legal in the way it is doing.

>Ummm, maybe because a MS OS is required to run "free" MS software. I can run >Eclipse on Fedora, Windows, etc.

Hi,

> MS drove netscape out of business with this kind of business practice and IBM

Try this:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000027.html

- Basically, waiting nearly 3 years for a release was "quite" unappropriate

I don't agree with your opinion. Donating a GUI builder won't drive other IDE vendors out of business, since a GUI builder is only one part of the IDE. I for one have never used a GUI builder, nor am I interested in using one.

The whole J2EE crowd doesn't care a lot for GUI builders, it will only appeal to a certain subset of Java community - people actually creating Swing or SWT interfaces.

In addition to that I doubt that a big company that has invested in something like IntelliJ or JBuilder will switch to Eclipse because of the free GUI builder.

On top of that there's still the discussion on whether a GUI builder can actually create useable, maintainable code.

Please note that I'm also using Eclipse...

still, almost all discussions about Eclipse vs Netbeans or jBuilder contain comments of people not willing to switch untill Eclipse it has a decent GUI builder. So that is one argument less.

Most companies give away things for free. It's part of marketing and building a brand.

And there are good (for consumer) reasons to give away things for free and bad (for consumer) reasons to give away things for free.

And you can't paint any company with a large brush with its tactics.

First - Eclipse is not IBM. It's a seperate foundation that delivers a software platform with a true open-source license and who just happened to get started by IBM. But it's made up of lots of different companies and lots of other people are involed with its development.

That alone makes it completely incomparable to something like integrating IE and similar products into Windows.

Second -- You can't really market an IDE to success in the same way you might be able to market a car, a word processor or even an operating system. An IDE is sold to a highly creative, highly opinionated crowd. Who often spend more time picking their IDE than they do in choosing spouses. Or at least can spout out more minute details on their IDE than they can about their signifgant others. And more than a few would not want to be in the position of having to choose -- keep your IDE or your signifigant other.

So an IDE has to deliver. It has to make the developer more productive -- make their lives easier so that they can focus on doing code.

And it's pretty obvious in the Java world that others have come before and not succeeded in capturing the developer mindshare that Eclipse has.

And you only do that if you really do deliver. Sun had at least 2 years to do that with Netbeans and for whatever reason. Couldn't do it. I honestly believe there were fundamental things wrong that forced IBM to go their route. IBM is a busines and they definitely get open-source (IBM helped the Apache Software Foundation get of the ground, their stamp of approval made Linux 'safe'. Their lawyers are the only reason why there's not a complete mass-panic on the SCO lawsuits).

Also it's not like the other IDEs are standing still. Or that they can't take their knowledge of what they do well and build on top of Eclipse's framework.

Finally -- I think it speaks volumes that the first edition of the eclipse GUI builder does SWING and not SWT. I don't buy that IBM couldn't have made it do SWT right now. They did it to help keep the Java community together.

Summary -- IBM is doing this to help the Java community and keep Java a viable alternative to MS.

I think Dion's interpretation of this news is incorrect. Scanning the three URLs posted, I can't find any indication of the creation of a third API that sits on top of SWT and Swing and abstracts away the differences.

My interpretation is that IBM is donating to Eclipse the code for a Swing GUI builder (the one that already exists in WSAD). The Eclipse guys will then enhance this GUI builder so that it can generate code for either SWT or Swing. Users of this GUI builded will then be able to build a GUI and generate either SWT or Swing code.

I believe that the "system of interoperability between Swing and SWT" mentioned in the ZDNet article means that Sun will enhance Swing so that SWT components may be hosted in Swing GUIs and IBM will enhance SWT so that Swing components may be hosted in SWT GUIs.

Thanks Dave. I used the wrong word. I meant to say that the builder tool will sit on top of the API, and you will be allowed to generate to either.

Thanks.

> in the ZDNet article means that Sun will enhance Swing so that SWT components
> may be hosted in Swing

Definitely a possibility. SwingWT ( http://swingwt.sourceforge.net/ ), has already implemented the bulk of Swing in terms of the SWT. It's not complete, but it's good enough to run Netbeans using native widgets.

"IBM has donated code to form a "Visual Editor Project"

Oh no! If it's anything like the Visual Editor's IBM has produced in the past, we're in for a nasty surprise. They ALWAYS suck.

As in the title, clueless

thanx ibm. i'll wear a blue t-shirt tonite. :)

greetings
dan

Well, If it is Visual Age Style then it is no use.

JBuilder has better GUI building tool and develops code without any proprietary tags (in on e method) and user can modify the code any time manually and Form will reflect that change or show error.

Eclipse is an excellent IDE and JBuilder is adding lot of similar stuff even in personal edition. (Though Eclipse has lot of enhanced features compared to JB Personal including excellent XML and Ant support).

Eclipse should really come with neat GUI builder to compete with JBuilder.

Cheers
Harimohan

Having used both (VAJ/WDSAD) - They aren't the same. But it can pull in VAJ GUI code as a basis (might not be 100%).

And you can modify code and it be reflected in GUI builder.

Download the code and try it out.

Whats the big deal, Netbeans has had a Visual GUI builder for years!

I personally think that that, in addition to the recent changes to Netbeans, was part of the reason for IBM doing so. And then it being the basis for a SWT builder also means that the Eclipse Project would build the SWT piece and not IBM (directly). No proof. Just putting pieces together. I wouldn't doubt if more plugins make their way to the Eclipse Project.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I have been told by some of my development peers that an issue with NetBean's GUI builder is that, unlike Eclipse's Visual Editor, it prevents developers from manually updating any code that is generated by the GUI builder. This is where I see Eclipse's Visual Editor having an advantage over NetBeans.

This is wrong. Changes are perfectly replicated both ways (ie change the code -> change graphical representation).

Works beautifully.

>
> Works beautifully.

Aren't there, though, some blocks of code that are considered "guarded" and thus cannot be edited unless you copy and paste your class into a generic class template, after which point the form editor cannot be used to edit the results of your changes?

Please see the following NetBeans FAQ item for a description of what I am talking about:

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/faqs/gui_editing.html#FAQ_0

Thanks,
Mike

This is fantastic news :)

I'm glad to see it. I started with NetBeans (Sun version) and was initially reluctant to switch to Eclipse because it didn't have a GUI builder. The refactoring support in Eclipse won out however and I did make the switch with no regrets. I hope the GUI builder is better than what was in NetBeans as that was quite primitive (but still free) compared to others I've worked with.

kktec

I have been using for both Netbeans and Eclipse for the past 1&1/2 years, and let me tell you that it perfectly possible for someone to build the gui with Netbeans and do the controller and model with Eclipse. I take this approach as Eclipse's code editor is far superior to that of Netbean's. I always checkout code from the CVS(which both of them support) and mount them in both Eclipse and Netbeans. If I modify the code with one, I can always ask the other to re-load that damn code.

Bottom Line : Both Eclipse and Netbeans are free. But both lack that something extra which we all need. The solution-> try using them together,it's an awesome combination, it's like having Thierry Henry and Ronaldo on the same side. Put in some nice plugins like PMD, MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench,Jalopy and what you get is a complete IDE at almost 1/10 to 1/100 th the price of the others (if you do purchase some plugins i.e)