Department of Computer Science 12 - An Eclipse GUI Builder University of Manitoba 1 www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~eclipse
12 - An Eclipse GUI Builder
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by Raphael Enns and Shantha Ramachandran
Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Last revised: May 21, 2004Overview:
In this tutorial, we describe how to use a GUI Builder plug-in for Eclipse, as well as look at its features. The GUI Builder that we will look at in this tutorial is the Designer created by Instantiations, Inc., and is available athttp://www.swt-designer.com. We will be using version 2.0.0 of the Designer in this tutorial.
A GUI Builder:
In the previous tutorials, we have seen that SWT and Eclipse are fairly simple andstraightforward to use. One of the most common questions about SWT, however, is“Where is the GUI Builder?” The answer is that there is no GUI Builder that comes withEclipse. However, because Eclipse is open source and designed for plug-ins, a GUIBuilder plug-in is able to be made and can be integrated right into Eclipse.The Designer is a plug-in that allows you design SWT and Swing GUIs in Eclipse. TheDesigner is available athttp://www.swt-designer.com. A restricted version of the plug-inis available for free download at the above website. There is also a professional version,which includes extra features, that is available for $199 USD. Look athttp://www.instantiations.com/swt-designer/comparison.htmlto see a comparison between the free and the professional versions.As of version 2.0 of the Designer, Instantiations includes both SWT and Swing support inthe Designer. The SWT part is the same as in previous versions and is called the SWTDesigner. The Swing part is called the Swing Designer and is similar to the SWTDesigner. There is also a WindowBuilder product in the Designer which is simply boththe SWT Designer and the Swing Designer.Since most of the features are the same or similar between the SWT Designer and theSwing Designer, this tutorial will mainly look at features of the SWT Designer. Todemonstrate the similarities and the differences between the SWT Designer and theSwing Designer, one of the examples at the end of this tutorial will be done in Swing.
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This work was funded by an IBM Eclipse Innovation Grant.
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© Raphael Enns, Shantha Ramachandran and David Scuse
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This is no video tutorial in the comment by exultantelectio. It's just a bunch of spam and maybe some malware stuff.
Thanks. Great tutorial mate... Here's the Video Tutorial: http://bit.ly/cXQPGN - If you prefer video like myself. Don't get me wrong, I still like ur tutorial!