Swing and IDEs
I know this sounds lazy as hell, but SWING is a lot of freakin' work. I'm trying to create a log window in Java and I'm doing it using Swing and wow, there's just tons of options and details you have to look out for. Unlike web development, which is what I'm more accustomed to, doing real GUI development means you're in charge of the whole environment. Where the window appears, what happens when you resize, dialogs, etc.
I like the idea of Luxor, writing the UI in XUL, but it's GPLed and I don't want to mess with that. I like Apache-style licenses better (like the MIT) "do what you want with the code, but don't sue me." That's a good license. The other projects like this don't seem ready for prime time yet (Xulux) so I'm going back to hand-coding my stuff.
Because IDEA doesn't do UIs I downloaded the latest NetBeans (v3.4 is out) and JBuilder 7 Personal Edition because they both have UI builders built-in. JBuilder is cool, but somewhat useless because the license restricts anything but personal use and 1/2 of the functionality is disabled. NetBeans is, well, NetBeans. I've never really gotten used to it. But it seems to have a following. Basically, I think I wouldn't mind it so much if I had an extra 256mg of RAM. Speaking of IDEs, Eclipse is okay also, though you have to "import" your project which annoys me. I just ran across this free XML/JSP module which looks good and was my other complaint until now. But I'm digressing, I don't think Eclipse has a UI editor.
So now I'm going through my Safari books and getting a handle on the stuff I need to do and it just seems very COMPLEX. I'm sure developing with .Net UI stuff isn't nearly as complicated as this stuff (knowing Microsoft).
That's it. I'm just moaning. Any Swing tips appreciated.
-Russ