Purpose: To show how to make a simple GUI application in Java using Eclipse and the Jigloo plugin. This tutorial will show you how to make an application that will use a JTextField (a textbox) and JLabel (a label) and a JButton (a button) to get the user's name and say hello to the user. After having released the Gluon Plugin for both NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA, we can proudly announce support for another major development platform: Eclipse. In this post, we will briefly go through the installation process and explain how to create your first basic Gluon application that can be deployed on desktop, Android and iOS devices.
Building GUIs for rich client apps in Eclipse is not the easiest thing in the world. I'm looking for windows builders comparable to the Net Beans GUI builder. I am downloading the Jigloo GUI builder which sounds pretty good but that is coming from company who made it. What about WindowsBuilderPro? This is a commercial product, not free like Jigloo. How is it better? I'll try both and see for myself...
On the install, Jigloo is very simple and is just like any other Eclipse plugins. Just copy to the features and plugins directories and your done. WindowBuilder on the other hand has you walk through a install wizard which took only a couple minutes to run through. (Make sure you don't have Eclipse running during the install). WindowsBuilder has several example apps you can try. In 5 minutes of testing this builder I found it very user friendly. I liked the 'quick view' feature where without even compiling you can get a feel for how your app will look during runtime. Now on to Jigloo. After the few minutes I found it easy to create a basic app. Nothing difficult. I liked the two screen (code/app) view that shows the two-way changes so if you edit the GUI the code changes or you edit the code and the GUI changes. So far they are both comparable products and I'll spend a bit more time using each on an actual application to see which is the better product.
Eclipse Tutorial
Eclipse Useful Resources
Selected Reading
Locating and Installing Plug-ins
The Eclipse platform which provides the foundation for the Eclipse IDE is composed of plug-ins and is designed to be extensible using additional plug-ins.
Several hundreds of plug-ins are available. Each plug-in adds more functionality to Eclipse. You can locate a plug-in that provides certain functionality by searching the Eclipse Market place (http://marketplace.eclipse.org/). For example you can locate plug-ins that allows eclipse to be used as a Python IDE.
From within the Eclipse IDE, you can search the market place by using the Eclipse Marketplace dialog which can be invoked by clicking on the Help menu and selecting Eclipse Marketplace.
In the screenshot above, to install PyDev-Python IDE for Eclipse, just click on the Install button. Using the dialog box that comes up you can install the plug-in.
You can also install a plug-in by using the Install New Software menu item accessible from the Help menu (Help → Install New Software).
In this case you have to know the URL of the remote site from which the plug-in can be downloaded. You can supply this URL by clicking on the Add button.
The install dialog box shows the plug-in components available in the remote site and allows you to install them.