4 replies to this topic

[xxxxjayxxx]

Swing or SWT ( the drag and drop method ) ?

[ZekeDragon]

It's a matter of personal taste which one of them is "better" in my opinion. I personally write all of my GUI code using the standard Swing API and use neither SWT or the NetBeans Platform for developing a cross-platform GUI app in Java. I'd suggest, if you use the Eclipse editor, to simply try writing a SWT application and see if it's your kind of coding style. I found that I prefer having control over my dev environment rather than using any of the IDE-based toolkits.

[xxxxjayxxx]

oh ok ... because i find that swing gui is too metallish ...

[ZekeDragon]

Swing has what is known as the "Pluggable Look and Feel", or 'plaf' for short. The Swing framework, for the most part, supports a native look across each platform, but if you're looking for true transparency you may want to go with SWT or NetBeans Platform. Remember that I said that it was my personal preference not to work with those platforms, since to me the utilities provided by Swing are more than adequate to perform any GUI code I may need. If your project needs a great native-widget feel and other Java technologies, then go with SWT or NetBeans. As I said, try them out and see what you prefer.

[xxxxjayxxx]

thx for the advice ... I think i should stick with SWT then :)