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New VE user would appreciate advice as I am having trouble with working with JPanels in JPanels in a [message #87775]

Wed, 20 April 2005 12:50

ThorbjÃ¸rn Ravn Andersen

Messages: 27
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

I just finished my first non-trivial program using Eclipse 3.0.2 with
the latest VE, and found it a very pleasant experience as opposed to the
tons of hand-written code we had in the last Swing project I worked on.

I tend to use JPanels with the BorderLayout to position things,
including new JPanels with BorderLayout inside of it, and when you get
nested two to three times with this it basically turns hard to work with
as you need to position the mouse very, very carefully to put it in the
right place.

More than once it was easier to put the object in the NORTH and then
change it to SOUTH in the source view.

There must be an easier way to work with this - either by putting visual
classes inside one another (how would you do that) or by being able to
zoom in and out in the VE-view (which I don't think I can do). Another
thing I looked for was a way to "Zoom to this component" which would let
you work inside of it, and let you zoom out again later.

I found none of these, which indicates to me that I just think in a
different way than the developers :)

How do others solve the problem of complex GUI's?

--
Thorbjørn

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Re: New VE user would appreciate advice as I am having trouble with working with JPanels in JPanel [message #87832 is a reply to message #87775]

Wed, 20 April 2005 14:02

Joe Winchester

Messages: 496
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Thorbjørn,

> I just finished my first non-trivial program using Eclipse 3.0.2 with
> the latest VE, and found it a very pleasant experience as opposed to the
> tons of hand-written code we had in the last Swing project I worked on.

Thanks for the feedback.

> I tend to use JPanels with the BorderLayout to position things,
> including new JPanels with BorderLayout inside of it, and when you get
> nested two to three times with this it basically turns hard to work with
> as you need to position the mouse very, very carefully to put it in the
> right place.

This is a good problem you've found. The problem that in WYSIWYG mode
the hit target area is sometimes too small. One thing you can do is
drop onto the Java Beans tree in which case it will generate a default
constraint and then select the Component and use the "constraints"
property in the property sheet to move it.

> There must be an easier way to work with this - either by putting visual
> classes inside one another (how would you do that) or by being able to
> zoom in and out in the VE-view (which I don't think I can do). Another
> thing I looked for was a way to "Zoom to this component" which would let
> you work inside of it, and let you zoom out again later.

There is an easier way - we hust haven't build it yet. We've toyed with
various ideas. One easy one for Border would be that the Tree had five
children pre-allocated for it for each region that you dropped onto, but
that works well for Border but not for other layout managers. What some
other tools do is have a cartoon representaiton of the GUI where the
regions are now shown superimposed on the WYSIWYG view but instead are
given their own real estate. I think this approach works well but I'd
like to see a way to combine this with the WYSIWYG view where as you
moved the mouse near an area the VE detected the fact there were
multiple drop regions close together and did a sort of local zoom/hover
thing that let you get more precise targetting.

Please open a bugzilla feature request and we'll discuss it more there
and get your input as well as others and try to come up with a good
solution.

Best regards,

Joe Winchester

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Re: New VE user would appreciate advice as I am having trouble with working with JPanels in JPanel [message #87917 is a reply to message #87832]

Wed, 20 April 2005 21:32

ThorbjÃ¸rn Ravn Andersen

Messages: 27
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Joe Winchester wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback.

You're very welcome.

> This is a good problem you've found. The problem that in WYSIWYG mode
> the hit target area is sometimes too small. One thing you can do is
> drop onto the Java Beans tree in which case it will generate a default
> constraint and then select the Component and use the "constraints"
> property in the property sheet to move it.

I don't quite understand your description. I'll have to try it next time.

> Please open a bugzilla feature request and we'll discuss it more there
> and get your input as well as others and try to come up with a good
> solution.

I have now opened bug 92157.

Looking forward to the discussion :)

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Re: New VE user would appreciate advice as I am having trouble with working with JPanels in JPanel [message #88303 is a reply to message #87917]

Sat, 23 April 2005 13:59

Joe Winchester

Messages: 496
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Thorbjørn,

> I don't quite understand your description. I'll have to try it next time.

All components are shown on the JavaBeans tree view and if you select a
new component from the palette you can drop onto the target parent in
the JavaBeans tree or the graphical design view.

The advantage of the JavaBeans tree view is that you can always see your
target as you don't have to hunt for it in the design view. The
disadvantage is that where the child gets positioned is a default, so in
your case with BorderLayout you can drop onto the JavaBeans tree view
and then set the "North", "South" constraint by selecting the newly
dropped Component and in the Properties view use the property editor for
the "constraints" property.

There are details on using BorderLayout in the Help Contents.

Best regards,

Joe

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