FormDesigner - Download
Welcome to Version 2.3 of the GEBIT Form Designer.
The Form Designer allows the visual construction of Java (in particular
Swing) based user interfaces. It has support to visually design forms
using for major Layout Managers, as well as the ones provided by
Sun as also some popular other layout managers. It supports usage
of all components compliying to the JavaBeans specification.
Installing Form Designer
Windows Systems
- Download and unzip the wininstall.zip file to a temporary directory
of your choice.
- Start the install\setup.exe program and follow the instructions
given.
UNIX Systems
- Download and unzip unixinstall.zip to a directory of your choice
(e.g. /opt/formdesigner)
- Create a directory /opt/formdesigner (in compliance with the
UNIX File System Standard)
- Unzip the contents of unixinstall.zip to this new directory with
the following command:
% unzip -d /opt/trend unixinstall.zip
- It might be necessary to install the public domain unzip tool,
since it is not included in every UNIX system by default.
- Finally set the JAVA_HOME variable to point to a Java 5 directory,
set the execution bit of the $FORMDESIGNER_HOME/bin/startDesigner.sh
file and review it. Start the Form Designer from here.
Release Notes for Version 2.3
Version 2.3 of the Form Designer is a bug fix and performance
optimization release.
Release Notes for Version 2.2
Version 2.2 of the Form Designer is a bug fix and performance optimization
release.
- A problem had caused the form designer to fail in loading subclasses
of abstract classes. This problem is fixed in this release.
Release Notes for Version 2.1
Version 2.1 of the Form Designer is a bug fix and performance optimization
release.
- When designing huge forms (more than 100 items), the Form designer
could become pretty slow. The problem was causing by an inefficient
undo() implementation. Disabling undo() did help before, but is
not necessary now any more.
- In particular dragging over a layout grid with NullLayout is
much faster now, than it used to be.
- Support for JTables was improved to generate less redundant code.
- The Form Designer comes now with a library to enable it to design
forms using the TableLayout. To use that feature, add the tablelayout.jar
file to your CLASSPATH and use the designer.properties file contained
in the table-layout sub-directory.
Release Notes for Version 2.0
- The layout functions of the Form Designer were improved providing
better drag & drop feedback. When using a grid oriented layout
(such as GridBagLayout) one can open up new rows and columns while
dragging items on the screen by holding the Ctrl key pressed.
- The 'Show Fly Over Tips' menu allows to have info tool-tips pop
up over the controls under the mouse cursor making debugging your
user interfaces easier.
- Layout alignment functions (new 'Layout' menu) were added, which
make the layout of grid-oriented user interfaces simpler.
- The Form Designer comes now with a library to enable it to design
forms using the JGoodies Forms
Layout. To use that feature, add the jgforms.jar file to your
CLASSPATH and use the designer.properties file contained in the
jgoodies-forms sub-directory.
- In-place editing of button/label/etc... text is now support.
To change the text in-place, simply double click on the control
to change, enter the text and press the Return key when done.
Release Notes for Version 1.5
- The Form Designer can load and store now form classes with abstract
super classes.
- For simpler alignment of components, one can display now a vertical
and a horizontal guide line.
- Some problems with the "morph bean" feature were fixed
- in particular morphing container type classes will now work correctly.
Release Notes for Version 1.4
The "Extract Form From Class..." was
improved. It will now analyze and use the variable names of inspected
form classes and use them for all beans extracted without a 'name'
property assigned.
It is now possible to initially choose a BoxLayout among the choices
of layouts provided in the "Create New Form..." Wizard.
Keyboard driven lay outing of items contained in a BoxLayout did
not work. This problem is fixed.
A bug was fixed, which caused bad code being generated when a BoxLayout
was used in combination with a RootPaneContainer (such as a JFrame
or JInternalFrame).
Setting the "layout" for certain Swing Top-Level windows
had not been possible in previous versions. This problem is fixed.
The Form Designer supports now the analysis of Forms without no-argument
constructor (up to a certain degree of complexity).
Supports now maintenance of selected Swing component client properties,
as they can be assigned programmatically with the JComponent.putClientProperty()
method. The corresponding properties to be maintained can be configured
in designer.properties.
Provides now the facility to configure the pattern used to generate
instance variable names from the name property of a control. (@see
designer.properties for details).
The cell editors in the Designers property inspector were not correctly
closed on FocusLost events. This problem is fixed.
Release Notes for Version 1.3
Supports a "Set to null" Button now in the property inspector
to edit complex properties
New menu point "Edit Selected" to edit a contained BOEditor
to better support navigation in nested bean structures
Inserting a custom bean with "Insert Custom Bean..." could
raise an uncaught NoClassDefFoundError with an ugly exception box
being displayed. This problem is fixed
Copying some items like a Copy+Paste did fail with an Encoding
Exception. This problem is fixed
Changing the properties of a FlowLayout was not correctly preserved.
This problem is fixed
CTRL+Click was sometimes de-selecting all selected items + resize
not working properly. These problems were in particular occuring
under JDK 1.4.1_3 due to a changed event protocol in the JDK. Workarounds
for these problems were introduced
Release Notes for Version 1.2
The Copy & Paste function was finally implemented in this
Release
One can now move and resize items using the keyboard arrow keys for
easier layout of the designed form
The New Form wizard has now an option to generate a main method in
the generated class for testing purposes
Editing Swing Border type properties with the property inspector
is now possible
Release Notes for Version 1.1
Version 1.1 of the Form Designer provides the following new features:
- a new icon property editor
- a new create by template wizard to create new forms
- support to edit top-level Swing forms (such as JFrame and JWindow)
- a reset option allowing to reset a property to its default value
- support for BoxLayout.
Caveats und Known Issues
When using copy & paste copied items maintain their original
sizes and locations when using a null layout, but other layout constraints
are not preserved.
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