Best IDE for developing Java Desktop Applications [closed]

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I've been developing Java Web apps using Eclipse as the IDE. Planning to start developing a desktop app based on Java. Can someone suggest the best IDE for developing Java based desktop apps? (One that would have drag drop for building the interface like Visual Studio)

asked Feb 22, 2009 at 11:13 958 2 2 gold badges 10 10 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges Subjective , but I guess you have made your choice Commented Sep 24, 2009 at 20:26

10 Answers 10

I recommend NetBeans IDE and of course it is free.

1,531 1 1 gold badge 13 13 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges answered Feb 22, 2009 at 11:16 26.5k 12 12 gold badges 62 62 silver badges 59 59 bronze badges Commented Feb 22, 2009 at 11:17

The visual editor in Eclipse can reverse engineer code. The Matisse editor in Netbeans is fantastic for creating GUI's. MyEclipse has a port of Matisse to Eclipse.

Commented Feb 22, 2009 at 12:18 IMO, some of Netbean is even better than MS VS 2008 Commented Feb 22, 2009 at 20:41

+1 for remembering me how powerful netbean is. been use Elipse fo android dev, i guess all IDE comes in own functionality. pick one for best

Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 1:25

I'd say it depends on which GUI framework you are going to use:

For Swing, the NetBeans Swing GUI builder seems to be the best choice (though there are visual editors for Swing in Eclipse too)
For JavaFX, the choice is pretty clear
For Eclipse (i.e. SWT, JFace, RCP) the Eclipse IDE for Java plus the visual editor would probably be the best way to go

Now which to choose, of course, is a different question.

1 1 1 silver badge answered Feb 22, 2009 at 17:31 Fabian Steeg Fabian Steeg 45.5k 7 7 gold badges 87 87 silver badges 113 113 bronze badges

Netbeans has the best support for creating GUIs

answered Feb 22, 2009 at 11:23 266k 266 266 gold badges 587 587 silver badges 779 779 bronze badges

+1 for Netbeans for GUIs, however IntelliJ is still my favourite general-purpose IDE for work. Unfortunately, it's not free.

UPDATE: There's an open sourced version of IntelliJ Idea suitable for Java Desktop Development

64.3k 29 29 gold badges 124 124 silver badges 150 150 bronze badges answered Feb 22, 2009 at 11:42 2,396 24 24 silver badges 47 47 bronze badges answered Feb 22, 2009 at 20:55 49 2 2 bronze badges

If you can afford the licences, WindowBuilder and WindowTester (for gui testing) are very good products for both SWT and Swing development

Commented Dec 1, 2009 at 6:18 answered Feb 22, 2009 at 11:18 JuanDeLosMuertos JuanDeLosMuertos 4,610 15 15 gold badges 57 57 silver badges 87 87 bronze badges

Response to RTFM messages: I agree reading the manual is a good way to learn more about the tool. The OP is trying to figure out a few tools to learn more in depth and finally zero in on one (or a subset to meet varying requirements). To get to the first list before reading the accompanying manuals, one would require some directions and help based on experience. If you had to read manuals of all related tools before identifying the tool that meets your requirement, a new tool would have come in or your project would have gone past you!

Response to original question on best IDE based editor:

Eclipse (strong community + well designed and documented plugin architecture)
GNU Emacs (a text editor engine with ability to infinitely extend. Your imagination is the limit)

answered Dec 1, 2009 at 5:57 mechanicker mechanicker 986 5 5 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges

haha I know this is an olllld post but I read it anyway and did have to wonder what the F stood for in RTFM :)

Commented Oct 16, 2015 at 12:58

In some ways it doesn't matter which tool you use as long as you put the effort into learning it in depth. Know your tools! Read the Free Manual!

In practice: you would want to pick Eclipse for SWT and Netbeans for Swing (Matisse is great when you are getting started). I haven't used IntelliJ but I am sure it is excellent.

answered Feb 22, 2009 at 23:14 Fortyrunner Fortyrunner 12.8k 4 4 gold badges 34 34 silver badges 54 54 bronze badges

A couple of years ago, I used Eclipse with Visual Editor, which I found very useful. I liked the code that it generated - it was really easy to take that and add the extra functionality I needed.

answered Feb 22, 2009 at 23:55 Paul Walker Paul Walker 2,726 4 4 gold badges 20 20 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges

if you aim for windows only than Visual studio is the best choice. For multiple platforms Mono is very good and it does not have java's performance issues. Of course you would use C# rather than Java if going with Mono or VS.

answered Sep 3, 2010 at 19:17 dmihailescu dmihailescu 1,633 17 17 silver badges 15 15 bronze badges

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Best IDE for developing Java Desktop Applications [closed]

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