April 19, 2002 — This week our choice pick from our Resources and Downloads directories is: JEasy 1.7, a Java application designer that uses Swing components.
The German creator of JEasy says developers can use the product, with the help of Layout Managers, to design application interfaces by simply defining Swing components and their relationships and writing only the Java code needed to perform user actions.
In action, JEasy presents a list of objects that have their properties stored in an XML file. The properties are used for creating and adding Swing components and other useful new objects. Each object has a unique ID and is stored in a hashtable. This reduces the
work of your program to:
- Activating a JEasy function to read the text file with all the object’s properties. All Swing components will be built and joined together. The screen will be visible.
- Writing call-back-functions to act on events generated by listeners inside the JEasy objects. Getting the Swing objects out of the hashtable and working with them.
As the XML file is so important for reading objects and properties, JEasy offers a designer to help guide you through writing it.
All the GUI components of your application are stored in a project inside the JEasyRepository. The repository helps you to specify the properties of the Swing components and the relationship between them. The repository uses forms and list boxes to help you to define your properties and their hierarchical order.
JEasy comes in four varieties: an eval Shareware version, downloadable from the site; a Standard version, available for $49; a Professional version, for commercial use, at $490; and an Enterprise version, for sophisticated usage, at a rate to be negotiated.
Sounds pretty easy to investigate.
If you’ve got a cool resource or download in the field of software development you’d like to share with the world, visit our user submission pages and fill out the simple forms. We’ll review them, and post them quickly to our directories. Plus, once a week, we’ll pick a particularly useful resource and highlight it for all our readers to enjoy.
