Hi Lloyd,
Hi Nick!
Answers below..
I'm an avid online reader and this is the very FIRST opinion I've ever
seen that the GUI features of Java Swing are somehow better than .Net.
Personally, I find that puzzling. I've seen dozens of whithering
denounciations of Swing from Java folks, but not one, until now, kind
word. I find this fascinating. I assume from your statements that you are
a .Net developer. Perhaps Swing is only good when you don't use it? ;-)
I'm surprised to be the first to say so!
Let it be know I once was a Java developper!
Swing is so good!
And I get so frustrated over and over again for the lack of advanced control
such as JTable, JTree, JTextComponent and JScrollPane in WinForm.
Sure there is DataGrid, TreeView, RichTextBox, ScrollableControl. but with
the later you can't basically do anything but their (limited) original
intend. Or you have to read heaps of documentation on interop, win32, etc...
and their so called 'model - view' behavior is such a joke (compare to
swing, anyway).
On the contrary, let's take for example the JScrollPane.
you could easily replace the scroll bar, put a control in the corner, add
headers, and set the internal view.
A very common scenario of such advanced use would to put side by side (with
a splitter in the middle) a JTree next to a JTable IN THE SAME
JScrollControl (hence sharing the same single scroll bar for both control!).
and maybe put a DateChooser in the corner and the table's headers in the
headers.
And all of that in maybe, uh.... 20 lines of code? (and working well!)
Try to do the same thing in WinForm, good luck!
Not to mention how easy it is to customize any single cell of your JTable or
JTree!
Also Swing uses REAL Model-View-Controller paradigm.
So it's very easy and not resource consuming at all (though a tad
unrealistic) to have a JTable with, lets say, 1.000.000.000 (1 billion)
rows.
Mhh.. tryed the same thing in WinForm?
Here's a quote from an interesting article on Swing: (the link is below)
" The standard Swing component set hasn't changed for the last 4-5 years.
These components remain just barely good enough for the job: but as their
competitors get better, the Swing component set has become, like, so
1998."
http://www.softwarereality.com/soapbox/swing.jsp
mmh... browsing that article rapidly... mmhh...
1st speed and ugliness. well, that was not to wrong. back in 1.2 it was not
top responsive and extremely good looking. but NOT THAT BAD!
2nd: browser integration compare to flash: hey, common, get real! does
WinForm integrate better than flash?
sure Avalon will do! in 2006! ho my god, it's so 1998!
3rd: Swing component should be more powerfull. mmh.. come on, learn to use
them 1st!
go there:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/components.html
7th: Make swing simpler?!?!?! obviously he is a VB(6) guy who speak after a
2 day crash course on Java ^_^
again, go there:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/components.html
9th: Improve the Layout Managers, gnn? no longer any doubt, this guy is a
moron!
admitedly GridBagLayout (for example) is a bit tricker to use in the IDE
than docking or anchoring. but provides so much more. and it's very behavior
makes it more difficult to integrate as smoothly as the laters. however try
it with JBuilder, it's quite easy in fact....