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On 2/1/2013 8:54 PM, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> On 02/01/2013 09:08 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 1/31/2013 7:54 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
> [ SNIP ]
>>>
>>> They just don't seem to have yet. And IMHO this is one reason why at
>>> least
>>> some people eschew using Java for desktop apps. It's certainly a
>>> significant factor in why I stopped bothering and went back to using
>>> .NET
>>> for my day-to-day ad hoc projects.
>>>
>>> I can't prove that I'm typical. But it's likely I'm not entirely unique
>>> either.
>>
>> I am sure there are other that do not like the Java GUI builders.
>>
>> But I am convinced that the main reason for the low usage
>> of Java for desktop apps is the look and feel not being
>> sufficient native.
>
> I think you're right about that latter. Desktop apps that I've written
> for various platforms in the past few years, professionally that is,
> have not been Java because they look like Java, not native. And I'll use
> Mono before I use Java, on other OS's.
>
> The pain of using Swing is there, it helps convince me not to use Java
> for desktop apps, but L&F is a bigger factor, sure.
>
> So for me the current painpoint with Java and GUIs is JSF, because I do
> that quite a lot. Like I said, I finally bit the bullet and automated
> the process for myself, so I can easily generated matching XHTML
> Facelets pages and managed beans, for example.

But is it really a GUI builder or a wizard you want?

GUI builder = tool you use initially and for maintenance of the GUI

wizard = tool that generates a lot of boilerplate stuff that is then
refined and maintained by hand

Arne

On 02/02/2013 01:21 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/1/2013 8:54 PM, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
>> On 02/01/2013 09:08 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 1/31/2013 7:54 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
>> [ SNIP ]
>>>>
>>>> They just don't seem to have yet. And IMHO this is one reason why at
>>>> least
>>>> some people eschew using Java for desktop apps. It's certainly a
>>>> significant factor in why I stopped bothering and went back to using
>>>> .NET
>>>> for my day-to-day ad hoc projects.
>>>>
>>>> I can't prove that I'm typical. But it's likely I'm not entirely unique
>>>> either.
>>>
>>> I am sure there are other that do not like the Java GUI builders.
>>>
>>> But I am convinced that the main reason for the low usage
>>> of Java for desktop apps is the look and feel not being
>>> sufficient native.
>>
>> I think you're right about that latter. Desktop apps that I've written
>> for various platforms in the past few years, professionally that is,
>> have not been Java because they look like Java, not native. And I'll use
>> Mono before I use Java, on other OS's.
>>
>> The pain of using Swing is there, it helps convince me not to use Java
>> for desktop apps, but L&F is a bigger factor, sure.
>>
>> So for me the current painpoint with Java and GUIs is JSF, because I do
>> that quite a lot. Like I said, I finally bit the bullet and automated
>> the process for myself, so I can easily generated matching XHTML
>> Facelets pages and managed beans, for example.
>
> But is it really a GUI builder or a wizard you want?
>
> GUI builder = tool you use initially and for maintenance of the GUI
>
> wizard = tool that generates a lot of boilerplate stuff that is then
> refined and maintained by hand
>
> Arne
>
>
Much closer to a wizard then to a builder. That's why using a simple
Scala DSL for JSF works for me, it's not so much that I want to do
layout that I want to avoid boilerplate. I generate coarse layout with
divs and panelGrids and panelGroups and dataTables; I do the fine layout
with CSS anyhow at a later stage.

AHS

On 2/2/2013 12:59 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 12:16:37 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> What did you try? JBuilder? NetBeans Matisse? Eclipse VE? Eclipse
>> WindowsBuilder?
>
> This was several years ago. The only workable GUI building tool I could
> find at the time was built into NetBeans. And it wasn't that good. I also
> didn't like the NetBeans IDE as much as Eclipse, and the GUI tool wasn't
> good enough for me to feel it was worth trading off the other usability
> differences that otherwise made Eclipse better for me.
>
> There was something that seemed like it should have worked for Eclipse, but
> by the time I'd tried to use it, it appeared no one was working on it and I
> wasn't able to get it working in the version of Eclipse I was using. Sorry,
> I don't recall which one it was.

Sounds like VE.

> Who knows? Maybe the tools are better today. Maybe NetBeans itself is
> easier to use, and/or maybe the GUI designer in it is nicer. But
that's the
> state things were in when I'd tried to use Java for GUI development.
>
> Still, the lack of a strong defense in favor of GUI development in Java,
> and indeed your own suggestion that most Java developers prefer to
> hand-code their GUIs anyway, suggest to me that things haven't really
> changed that much in the intervening years.

WindowBuilder is supposedly a bit better.

It was a commercial product, but when Google acquired the company
they opensourced it.

But that tool it not widely used either.

We see practically no questions about it here.

A quick check on StackOverflow revealed 133 questions
tagged WindowBuilder and 22752 questions tagged Swing.

Arne

On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:08:10 -0500, Arne Vajhøj <>
wrote:

[snip]

>But I am convinced that the main reason for the low usage
>of Java for desktop apps is the look and feel not being
>sufficient native.

And that the coding side of it is also weird and for no or little
perceived benefit. That is my view based on a basic look. YMMV.

I would like to be able to say exactly where things will go.
Aesthetics are part of it.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 21:05:13 -0500, Arne Vajhøj <>
wrote:

[snip]

>WindowBuilder is supposedly a bit better.
>
>It was a commercial product, but when Google acquired the company
>they opensourced it.
>
>But that tool it not widely used either.
>
>We see practically no questions about it here.
>
>A quick check on StackOverflow revealed 133 questions
>tagged WindowBuilder and 22752 questions tagged Swing.

I do not challenge your statement of width of use, but ...

Since something that is easy to use would tend to have fewer
questions per capita, the raw number of questions is not as indicative
as you might think.

I saw how rec.arts-int-fiction got turned into little more than
an Inform 7 support group. I recall one poster stating that the
language made it very easy to do easy things, but if what one wanted
to do was off the beaten track, it could be quite difficult. And we
saw a lot of questions.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 2/4/2013 5:11 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:08:10 -0500, Arne Vajhøj <>
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> But I am convinced that the main reason for the low usage
>> of Java for desktop apps is the look and feel not being
>> sufficient native.
>
> And that the coding side of it is also weird and for no or little
> perceived benefit.

Coding wise I don't see it as that different.

It was how things were done before separation in ML and code
became common.

..NET Win Forms uses many of the same paradigms.

AWT and Swing's emphasis on layout manager may be a bit different,
but other frameworks typical have something similar, so I don't see
it as much of a difference in paradigm driven by API, but more like
a difference in paradigm driven by culture.

Arne

On 2/4/2013 5:18 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Feb 2013 21:05:13 -0500, Arne Vajhøj <>
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> WindowBuilder is supposedly a bit better.
>>
>> It was a commercial product, but when Google acquired the company
>> they opensourced it.
>>
>> But that tool it not widely used either.
>>
>> We see practically no questions about it here.
>>
>> A quick check on StackOverflow revealed 133 questions
>> tagged WindowBuilder and 22752 questions tagged Swing.
>
> I do not challenge your statement of width of use, but ...
>
> Since something that is easy to use would tend to have fewer
> questions per capita, the raw number of questions is not as indicative
> as you might think.

Number of questions is affected by both ease of use (easy to use
features create less questions than hard to use) and by
life cycle status (new features create more questions than old
features). So I would not conclude much if it is x2 or x0.5, but
I will conclude from x100.

Arne