Comment Eclipse RCP (Score 1) 116
You could do a lot worse than to check out SWT / JFace / Eclipse RCP Framework.
If you haven't heard of these things:
* SWT is a relatively low-level cross-platform widget toolkit. It is at around the same level as Qt, GTK+, and the GUI bits of MFC.
* JFace adds a layer of abstraction on top of and is built to work with SWT...helping you effectively split your widgets and the data feeding them in nice ways. It also provides a whole lot of convenience classes for doing common things more easily.
* Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) ties all the above together in a huge framework for building any sort of GUI application. This is where you will learn the most about design pattern applications to GUI projects. Eclipse itself is built using this framework.
The learning curve can be a bit steep if just starting, but I haven't come across anything so well put together before. It's full of lots of good ideas.
Even if you choose not to use it (or can't use for good reasons) you will learn a great deal about how to put together a GUI application and how to apply certain patterns and techniques effectively. A few well known "gurus" have been involved in the design and you can be sure that a lot of effort has been put into the architecture and deciding what works and what doesn't in terms of patterns and techniques.
This book is a really great way to get into it all:
http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Rich-Client-Platform -Applications/dp/0321334612/sr=1-1/qid=1164595827/ ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2317093-7394243?ie=UTF8&s=books
And for more info ...
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Plat form
If you haven't heard of these things:
* SWT is a relatively low-level cross-platform widget toolkit. It is at around the same level as Qt, GTK+, and the GUI bits of MFC.
* JFace adds a layer of abstraction on top of and is built to work with SWT...helping you effectively split your widgets and the data feeding them in nice ways. It also provides a whole lot of convenience classes for doing common things more easily.
* Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) ties all the above together in a huge framework for building any sort of GUI application. This is where you will learn the most about design pattern applications to GUI projects. Eclipse itself is built using this framework.
The learning curve can be a bit steep if just starting, but I haven't come across anything so well put together before. It's full of lots of good ideas.
Even if you choose not to use it (or can't use for good reasons) you will learn a great deal about how to put together a GUI application and how to apply certain patterns and techniques effectively. A few well known "gurus" have been involved in the design and you can be sure that a lot of effort has been put into the architecture and deciding what works and what doesn't in terms of patterns and techniques.
This book is a really great way to get into it all:
http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Rich-Client-Platfor
And for more info
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Pla
