Mauro Carniel

The Java development platform always provides limited support for application development based on a graphical user interface, an area where more traditional languages and integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Visual Basic or Delphi have based their success. Today the Java SE distribution offers essentially the same features it offered in 1999 with regards to Java graphical components: the Swing toolkit. Swing provides graphical components like grids, trees, text fields, checkbox, radio button, combo-box and others. Anyway these components have changed little and not been improved in latest releases of Java. All in all Swing greatly lacks some key aspects: • Input fields are too simple. They can't be compared with the advanced graphical components avai... (more)

Developing Rich Client Applications Using Swing - II

In Part 1 of this article, I introduced rich client development, available architectures for developing rich client applications based on the Swing toolkit, and technologies that could be used to make development more productive. In this second part, I'll compare the most popular IDEs and evaluate them with an eye to Swing development for rich client applications. Swing-based Rich Client... (more)

Developing Rich Client Applications Using Swing

Before describing solutions available for rich client application development, it would be a good idea to explain what exactly a rich client application is and which rich client topologies can feasibly be built using the Java platform. In the main, a rich client is a part of a software system that contains a user interface (UI) and whose front end is "rich," i.e., the user interface has... (more)