I use some nice controls/widgets in a simple wxPython app I developed taking inspiration from the sample demo. Call it my prototype.
I am now ready to migrate my prototype to Java/SWT.
Some controls are just not there.. or.. at least.. I could not find them.
Is there anything else in the FOSS world of SWT apart from the usual:
SWT/JFace
Nebula
Opal
For a while I did not know about Nebula nor Opal at all. Now I do. At least you know I have done some legwork before coming here. Could it be that I am still oblivious to some fundamental set of extensions to the core SWT?
What I am doing right now is building a table, on the left - controls I use from wxPython, on the right - equivalent controls I'll use in Java/SWT.
The right column still has some gaping blanks..
From the screenshots in wxWidgets I didn't saw anything, that is in SWT missing. If you share the gaps, we might be able to help you to find the right tool for you. There are many frameworks that contribute specific UI, that might be used. For example GEF,BIRT or Zest.
Related
I started working on projects in GWT last month. It was all well until I needed drag and drop(DND). After trying gwt-dnd library like everyone else I got infatuated by smart-gwt widgets. But everywhere I read that its a very thin wrapper over Javascript. But I've still decided to go with it. I have some general questions regarding GWT.
Is it okay to write the GUI in a mix of plain-GWT and smart-gwt ?
Can I implement drag and drop only with plain-GWT without the help of external libraries?
Should I write the smart-GWT like widgets in plain-GWT myself?
No you shouldn't and neither is proposed from the smartgwt creators, There are some tweaks that can make it work, but it is at a per case base ...
You could try to achieve this, especially with the latest 2.5 version and its Elemental library.
Depends what you need and the resources you have for the task. You could make look-like lighter elements macthing the smartgwt ones, but it can be tricky if you are looking after operations like filtering etc. Bottom line is, you wouldn't be considering the smartgwt or any other similar library, if you had the time and resources to develop its widgets.
I have been working on a project model and pretty much completed it. Now I must implement the view of the project. I like eclipse view layout very much and tried to implement like this but I couln't. And then download source code of eclipse but couldn't find my specific code snippet in all of the source code. I mean I want to take basic layout implementation like eclipse Coolbar,ctabfolder and events. any suggections ?
Thanks.
If you like the Eclipse look and feel and the components used, you should have a look into the technologies used with Eclipse:
SWT is the GUI toolkit. It differs from Swing in that it uses the native widgets, if possible. This makes an application using it behave more like a native application than Swing does, which has its own set of components. You will find the raw components that you mention here.
JFace is an application framework based on SWT. It provides higher level conceptual components.
Eclipse RCP is a platform for building application. It takes away some common tasks of application building but, of course, you need to learn the concepts first.
Swing has similar components, but does not use the native widgets. It draws them itself. In my opinion Swing is easier to learn and to use but the results of SWT are often nicer - you can often "feel" that a Swing application behaves not completely right. It is better if Swing applications do not try to mimic the native look and feel to avoid the uncanny valley effect. So expect your resulting application to look and feel different.
There are more documentation and third-party libraries available for Swing, for example the very nice Netbeans RCP that let's you easily build applications.
What you are looking for is a docking framework. What the best framework is is open for debate.
You might have a look at this question for a list of popular frameworks
is there any drag and drop environment to work with GWT widgets.
or any user friendly IDE or plugin on IDE's
i remember using some thing like MyEclips for developing Hibernate was better then working with .xml files.
The Eclipse-based WindowBuilder Pro supports GWT and is now free, courtesy of Google.
I tried GWT Designer, http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools/gwtdesigner/index.html, but I think for now I'll stick to code the guis myself by hand.
The main reasons are:
Sometimes, it takes a little while (longer than I can wait) to load the design mode.
Sometimes it breaks after you modify code underneath.
Sometimes, does not do what you expect it to do.
I would suggest you giving it a try and see if it works out for your needs.
In my opinion, the experience using it has been frustrating than encouraging.
I need recommendations from people whom have implemented an easy to use GWT editable datagrid.
I spent 4 hours with the PagingScrollTable in the gwt-incubator-july-14-2009.jar, and would now like to try other options.
What I'm looking for:
easy to get started (ex. drop a jar, edit .gwt.xml)
advanced features once you have gotten started
documentation of advanced features
self-contained module with minimal dependencies on other modules, jars or components
low cost/free
Thats all :)
Please, for goodness' sake, stick with vanilla GWT. Just use GWT data cell tables, lists and trees.
Smart-GWT and GXT really look good in their demo. e.g., Smart-GWT has widgets that accepts xml/json datasource directly that would save you time.
But, you find that your application requirements would "just need that tiny tweak" in the way the widget eats the datasource. Both GXT and Smart-GWT have attractive convenient widgets, but you find you need "just a little" tweak to make them suit your requirement.
Is your "little" tweak "important" enough? So, you resort to writing your patch for that "little" tweak. And soon you find that there is a whole entrail of "little" tweaks. You experiment and research and try untried means.
Finally, you discover that you might just as well had used vanilla GWT for which you would have taken less time to get the behaviour you want. Vanilla GWT is tried and proven.
Do not be tempted by the showcases of SmartGWT or GXT. Learn CSS and learn how to integrate CSS into vanilla GWT, which would make your widgets just as attractive as SmartGWT or GXT.
Then you would not regret because you would not face any impediments toward using other GWT features.
What is good enough for Google is good enough for me.
Hi HJO there are many solutions to problem depends on what you want. The GWT-EXT, EXT-GWt and SmartGWT libraries all have editable data grid implemented. Or you can make your own with FlexTable,ScrollPanel,TextBox and add a few event handlers. Both GWT-EXT and SmartGWT are in LGPL license and I believe EXT-GWT is GPL license. If you not doing it for production then any will do, but if you are doing it for big production environment I suggest to really test each of their performance first. I suggest to choose something light weight and robust instead of simplicity or appearance on production environments. At the end, the less data/widget loaded + less handlers = performance and happy user.
Take care,
NingZhang.info
I do not recommend to use GWT DataGrid for production (in GWT 2.4), unless you like coding workarounds for several bugs (most of them on Internet Explorer):
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=7065
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=7347
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=7139
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=6747
I use CellTable instead of DataGrid and wait for bugfixing from GWT team.
I have recently been asked to make an Eclipse Rcp view that would be "pretty".
In that purpose I had fist looked at Java2D (after my boss advised me so) before the client's query turned to be more like
"It would be smooth if you could do some flash or something ..."
From there JavaFx seemed appealing to me however I never had a chance to use it before. I then were wondering if before to dive "head first" anyone (who would have preferably used it seriously) had any advice, warning or any constructive comment to do about using this product in an RCP view (so based on SWT).
I really long to know if JavaFx meets it's promises.
Thanks in advance and have a good day !
[EDIT]I dont want an Eclipse Fancy skinning or to make views appear with light effects or in a CompizFusion way,
What I want is to display fancy animations and pretty visual effects within a specific view that will be called sometimes. (Sorry I wasn't clear in the first place :s)[/EDIT]
*I'll pass on the "What's pretty and what's not ?" and other "Tastes are a personnal thing" debates, here "pretty" simply means to qualify a view containing convoluted transparancies and subtle animations ...
Eclipse RCP can also be customized in the way it looks, e.g. when you dont want to have the Eclipsi-L&F. Its called Presentation API, I saw a quite amazing UI once in a presentation but I cannot find it right now. Anyway, I just want to point you the direction, since I personally havent used this API (yet).
There are also some "skins" available for download.
Nebula
MP3 Manager
EDIT: Just found the slides. It goes quite into detail, but when you have a look at the last slide...it doesnt look like the Eclipse you know :-)
JavaFX uses Swing as default layout engine, so you'll gain nothing using it rather than Java2D.
On the other hand, using either your home-grown toolkit or Swing is generally a bad idea when working with Eclipse, as it already embeds the SWT toolkit. The main advantage of SWT over Swing is that it use the OS native widgets. Using another toolkit will lead to the following issues:
Poor integration with Eclipse look&feel.
Poor integration with Eclipse views and editors management.
The answer is simple. No, you can't use JavaFX yet. The problem is that JFX script can't be embedded into Swing nor Eclipse SWT. We already know about such an issues. (The is some kind of hack how to embed JFX into Swing APP only.)