"A few months ago OSNews reported that the next version of Java (code name 'Mustang') will feature native GTK components for the Swing API. This got us excited since, quite frankly, Swing's GTK look and feel has always been quite dissapointing. We downloaded the latest release candidate of JDK 1.6 to see how well the Swing GTK look and feel looks, we were quite pleased with what we found."
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Member since:2005-07-07
Here we go again.
Have you used Eclipse ?
Yes
It's the best "multi platform" IDE written in Java using native rendering on each platform (Win, Linux & OS X). It's blazing fast cause of this.
I don't know what kinda machine you're using, but Eclipse is anything but blazingly fast. On OS X, I actually prefer Netbeans and the Swing UI. They feel faster to me, on my Powerbook.
I don't really know why Sun didn't adopt this as the standard widget toolkit for 1.6 and threw away Swing.
Perhaps it's because there is very little that SWT brings to the table? The native looking widgets are nice, but Swing is improving on that area. The only place that Swing is behind in SWT is in using native fonts. This is also being worked on.
Of course, this doesn't bring up the problems with SWT. With SWT, you've removed Java's ease of distribution (one binary, all platforms). Compare Eclipse and Netbeans. With Netbeans, you can just download one zip file and that works on any machine with a Java 1.4+ VM. Eclipse on the other hand, you've got worry about what platform you're running on, and if SWT exists on that platform. This is reflected on the Eclipse download page. If you're going to worry about such deployment issues, why not just write your code in C++ and use wxWidgets or Qt?
There are some Visual Designers for SWT that made the hole GUI building a pleassure!
You've got some perverse sense of pleasure! The VEP sucks majorly and is unusable on most platforms due to it's sluggishness. I have found no one(including Eclipse evangelists) who claims that the VEP is a pleasure to work with. There is Jigloo, but that doesn't allow me to design Swing apps on OS X so it's of no real use to me.
Ever tried Matisse? Try it, then come back and say that Eclipse has better GUI building tools.
Can't believe I've replied to an off topic post.... ah well.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2005-12-28
Well, I was using it too before I start using uTorrent. It only gives you a hint that beyond java memory consumption issues, you can build a really snappy application with SWT that blends really good into the OS.
And for the "netbeans" guy, I'm giving it a try right now and it's really good (Matisse it's great, very close to VS.2005 Express) but not as snappy as Eclipse! 
Member since:2005-11-09
I don't really know why Sun didn't adopt this as the standard widget toolkit for 1.6 and threw away Swing.
A little off topic, but this is because of the nice relationship between IBM and Sun. As you probably know, IBM is a heavy contributer on the Eclipse platform (their new versions of Rational Software Modeler/Architect are based on Eclipse). Also, rumours have it that the name "eclipse" was not chosen at random
Member since:
2005-12-28
Have you used Eclipse ? It's the best "multi platform" IDE written in Java using native rendering on each platform (Win, Linux & OS X). It's blazing fast cause of this. I don't really know why Sun didn't adopt this as the standard widget toolkit for 1.6 and threw away Swing.
There are some Visual Designers for SWT that made the hole GUI building a pleassure!
believe me .. have a look at it! http://www.eclipse.org/swt/