At last: intelligent UI layout

One of the cool things being shown off today at NetBeans day is Matisse, an open-source plugin that does intelligent layout of user interfaces. As you drag and drop components, it automatically derives constraints (which you can tune) between the components in the new UI. This gives a developer experience that has the ease of use of a simple absolute/matrix positioning UI layout system (which is what almost all UI editors do) and yet produces layouts that have the ability to respond to dynamic behavior like resizing windows or internationalization (ever try to put German labels on buttons sized for Japanese?)

This works particularly well with the advanced components from JDNC, like the intelligent table that allows you to easily connect data sources to table cells. With the drag and drop layout and wiring, this gives you an incredible ability to build desktop apps very quickly.

June 26, 2005