Plog

Go check this out right now:

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/matisse.html

I was able to use Matisse to easily create a much more professional looking form in Java than I have ever in the past. I do believe that with Matisse (and after more bugs are worked out) that Java’s Swing toolkit will finally become largely acceptable to people. The problem with the straight jacket of the old layout managers is that they provided a “oh, this was defininely made using the Border Layout” or Card layout or box layout. All of the layout managers made it nearly impossible to put a little OK CANCEL buttons on the bottom right of the screen. It can now be done using Matisse in 2 seconds, just like visual studio.

Right now there are bugs but the bugs will go away and it is stable enough to use. Be careful if you use this system on old forms that you want to convert to Matisse. Make a backup because the new layout helping system sometimes makes your controls just vanish if you do the wrong mouse movement. Again, these will all be fixed but for now I recommend that you use this to completely recreate a form from scratch.

Advantages over Visual Studio

The new Matisse system seems to be actually better than the system used in MS Visual Studio (the last time I used it). While the anchoring system is great in VS, the anchors in Matisse are generated automatically. Basically this results in spending more time in the layout mode and less time pushing and pulling anchors in the property sheet.