NetBeans 6.0 has been released. The 6.0 release includes significant enhancements and new features, including a completely rewritten editor infrastructure, support for additional languages, new productivity features, and a simplified installation process that allows you to easily install and configure the IDE to meet your exact needs.
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Member since:2005-07-12
I totally agree. There is a reason why Java is lagging behind on the desktop. And without an hugh commitment from SUN, things will not change. Sorry but even the >10 year old Interface Builder from NeXT/Apple runs circles around anything I've seen on the Java side of the GUI fence lately.
[rant]
Java was build to simplify the life of C/C++ developers. Unfortunately, these times are way over and instead of following the way of making developers life easier, SUN simple did half-hearted attempts or just denied that Java lakes some vital pieces and has become crufty.
Java nowadays is neither easy nor did anything to remedy long standing issues like a good component model which supports versioning (see OSGi), proper data source abstraction (see LINQ), modern GUI development tools and rich widget sets for the most common tasks, etc. Java is definitively on the way to become the Cobol of the 21st century.
[/rant]
(And yes; I'm a Java developer).
Edited 2007-12-03 22:15
Member since:2005-07-06
I totally agree. There is a reason why Java is lagging behind on the desktop. And without an hugh commitment from SUN, things will not change. Sorry but even the >10 year old Interface Builder from NeXT/Apple runs circles around anything I've seen on the Java side of the GUI fence lately.
I completely concur. Since I started using Java eight years ago, it's unbelievable how little has changed. The class libraries and code are painfully verbose, and Java GUI development is light years behind the sort of power available to developers in a toolkit like Qt and even .Net. You get SVG integration, lots of powerful widgets and much better integration with the wider desktop environment.
I mean, hell. Take Sun's Java Desktop System. You might assume, quite rightly, that you could program anything GUI related in that environment through Java. You'd be dead wrong though.
Java is definitively on the way to become the Cobol of the 21st century.
So it's going to be around forever then? ;-)
Member since:2006-05-21
Maybe this is interesting:
SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit
http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
The java-gnome language bindings project
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
Does this help you?
Member since:2006-03-23
Java-gnome looked promising until the developers specifically stated that they are making bindings tied to GNOME. There will be no separate ones for GTK, which makes them kind of useless for generic cross-platform GUI development.
But I suppose after they've finished it can always be forked (and probably will if there is enough demand and they don't come to reason by then)
Member since:2005-07-06
Even better: Qt Jambi.
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/jambi
(Scroll down to see the link to the open-source download.)
I haven't gotten around to trying it yet (I'm still a rather novice Java programmer with no Qt experience), but it looks pretty awesome.
Edited 2007-12-04 21:45 UTC
Member since:2005-07-10
Have you tried Qt-Jambi? Looks pretty sweet, IMO.
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/jambi
Member since:2007-07-25
Member since:
2007-07-25
First and foremost: A statusbar. Sure you can use a label, but it looks like crap, and includes a lot of manual labor for something that all other widget toolkits have.
I would also like a font chooser dialog. Yes I actually have had several projects where one was needed and I had to use some unstable custom dialog I found on the internet.
And what about a dock like in QT? A lot of large program uses such solutions.
...and although its not directly a Swing widget issue, I would also like to see better graphics capabilities built in. For instance support for SVGs and vector graphics, but this is one of the features that are closed and will not be fixed. And why not kill the redrawing issues when first looking into the graphics.
I could also go on and on about the shortcomings of the existing widgets...Java is suppose to be rapid application development (or at least compared to other languages like C and C++), but lets face it: even C++ provide less work nowadays with QT and all. In Swing you have to do a lot of stuff manually because of its limitations, while for instance QT have all that stuff built-in. Dont wanna sound like a QT fanboy or anything, but it is my best example next to .NET :p
This is just my opinion based on my own experiences and the experiences of the people around me. But as most the people I have used to program with on projects and such have left Java because of the Swing issues to go play with .NET I have strong feelings about this issues. The truth is that if people can make the same, if not better, quality apps that I can in less time and with better behavior using .NET, then I may be forced to make the big switch myself. Its all about staying in business.
Edited 2007-12-03 21:56