JGoodies Forms & Looks

JFormDesigner supports and uses software provided by JGoodies Karsten Lentzsch.

The JGoodies Forms framework support is very extensive. Not only the layout manager FormLayout is supported, also some important helper classes are supported: Borders, ComponentFactory and FormFactory (com.jgoodies.forms.factories).

JGoodies Looks look and feels are built-in so that you can preview your forms using those popular look and feels. JGoodies Looks examples contains some useful components to build Eclipse like panels: JGoodies UIF lite.

JGoodies Forms ComponentFactory

The JGoodies Forms ComponentFactory (com.jgoodies.forms.factories) defines three factory methods, which create components. You find these components in the palette category JGoodies.

JGoodies UIF lite

JFormDesigner supports SimpleInternalFrame and UIFSplitPane from the JGoodies UIF lite package, which is part of the JGoodies Looks examples. You find both components in the palette category JGoodies.

UIF lite SimpleInternalFrame is an Eclipse like frame. UIFSplitPane is a subclass of JSplitPane that hides the divider border. Use UIFSplitPane if you want to put two SimpleInternalFrames into a split pane. See example examples/UIFLitePanel.jfd.

When using one of these components, you have to add the library redist/jgoodies-uif-lite.jar to the classpath of your application. Or add the source code to your repository and compile it into your application. The source code is in redist/jgoodies-uif-lite-src.zip.

The API documentation is also available here: doc.formdev.com/jgoodies-uif-lite/.

IDE plug-ins: If you use one of the UIF lite components the first time, the JFormDesigner IDE plug-in ask you whether it should copy the required library (and its source code and documentation) to the IDE project and add it to the classpath of the IDE project.

To add a toolbar to a SimpleInternalFrame, add a JToolBar to the Design view, select the SimpleInternalFrame, select the "toolBar" property in the Properties view and assign the toolbar to it.

UIF lite toolbar   UIF lite toolbar