WindowBuilder- A GUI Builder for Eclipse

As you might have noticed, Eclipse does not come with a GUI builder. However, there’s no need to worry. Since Eclipse has been built with easy plug-in support in mind, people have written a number of GUI builders available as Eclipse plug-ins.

WindowBuilder

The most popular GUI builder in the Eclipse world arguably is WindowBuilder from Instantiations which supports SWT, RCP, Swing and GWT. This tool has won the Eclipse Community award for "Best Commercial Eclipse-Based Developer Tool" some time ago.

Fortunately, Instantiations has been acquired by Google in early August 2010, who decided to make a number of Instantiation’s tool – including Window Builder Pro – "available to all developers at no charge".

For more information about Goolgle’s relaunch of Instantiations Developer Tools, see Google Web Toolkit Blog:

• Google Relaunches Instantiations Developer Tools – Now Available for Free
  http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-relaunches-instantiations.html

The latest version of WindowBuilder Pro can be downloaded for free from Google code:

• Installing WindowBuilder Pro
  http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools/download-wbpro.html

Alternative GUI builders for Eclipse

Even though WindowBuilder arguably is the most popular GUI builder for Eclipse, there are alternatives. Some examples:

• What’s the recommended Gui Builder for Eclipse
  http://www.networkworld.com/community/itaa/eclipse-gui-builder
• Visual Editor (VE)
  http://www.eclipse.org/vep/downloads/
• Jigloo
  http://www.cloudgarden.com/jigloo/
• Matisse4MyEclipse Swing UI Designer
  http://www.myeclipseide.com/
  http://www.myeclipseide.com/module-htmlpages-display-pid-5.html
• Visual Swing4 Eclipse
  http://code.google.com/p/visualswing4eclipse/

Advertisement