GUI Planning?

[Tombomb]

I was just wondering what the best way, or some ideas for ways, to design a program with multiple pages would be. For example say I want a welcome page that allows the user to create a project. Once the user clicks "Create Project" I want that screen to disappear and a second page to appear with new GUI Components for the user to see. In order to keep organized and have a well designed program, how would one go about this? Would you just create a new .java file for each screen/page? I have tried it all in one file and it just gets clustered beyond belief.

Any ideas would be appreciated! Thank you!

- Tombomb

[Tombomb]

Anything? :/

[Fubarable]

...For example say I want a welcome page that allows the user to create a project. Once the user clicks "Create Project" I want that screen to disappear and a second page to appear with new GUI Components for the user to see.

CardLayout would work well for swapping components dynamically

In order to keep organized and have a well designed program, how would one go about this? Would you just create a new .java file for each screen/page?

Yes, this would make the most sense to me.

Vut having said this, I would recommend that you first work on the non-GUI "brains" part of your code first, the "model" that the GUI is built around since this is ultimately more important than the GUI itself.

[Tombomb]

CardLayout would work well for swapping components dynamically

I'll look into this for swapping the components out. I was also instructed by a professor that high level GUI's in java used GridBagLayout to place components because you have total control of where they are placed, unlike GridLayout or BorderLayout.

Yes, this would make the most sense to me.

Vut having said this, I would recommend that you first work on the non-GUI "brains" part of your code first, the "model" that the GUI is built around since this is ultimately more important than the GUI itself.

Okay I'll do it that way, and I totally agree. I am re-doing a program I have written most of and I did the GUI at the same time as the Computational Object and its gotten mixed in and very messy.

Thank you for your response!

[Fubarable]

...I was also instructed by a professor that high level GUI's in java used GridBagLayout to place components because you have total control of where they are placed, unlike GridLayout or BorderLayout.

With all due regard to your instructor, that statement seems overly simplistic by a long shot. Complex GUI's may use GridBagLayout, but often can obtain the layout desired and in a far easier fashion using nested JPanels, each using a more coder-friendly layout such as GridLayout, BoxLayout, BorderLayout, etc,... and yes sometimes even nested in combination with GridBagLayout.

Thank you for your response!

My pleasure!

[Tombomb]

Yeah the way I was doing it before was nesting JPanels like crazy to get stuff where I wanted it lol.... It was kind of annoying actually but I probably didn't design it very well hah :/

[DarrylBurke]

Moved from New to Java

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