Eclipse Visual Editor just got a lot better!
I haven’t used the Eclipse Visual Editor (VE) project for some time until last night. Some of their latest release work has brought a lot of simplicty to how GUI’s are built today, especially with the Grid Control. I would think its just as simple as MS Visual Studio, if not better in some ways, now.
Ed Burnette recently posted a column on his blog that mentioned:
You’ve probably heard about Matisse, the GUI builder being developed for NetBeans 4.2. It’s similar to a little-known but innovative GUI designer called Foam in the way it makes GUI design much easier. Not to be outdone, Eclipse is getting similar features, beginning with version 1.1 of the Eclipse Visual Editor and continuing in 1.2 and beyond. You can see a preview in this oh-so-smooth screencast narrated by Gili Mendel. For more information see bug 101936 and this posting by Joe Winchester.
I took a look at Foam and it again adds some simplicity to GUI design and the concept of drag n’ drop. I’m very curious to see what the VE project can bring after a couple releases of stability and feature cycles (say version 2.0 or 3.0) - should be interesting!
Take a look at the latest Eclipse VE demo here.
