I’ve been struggling to find a framework/IDE/GUI designer that suits my current needs. I’m working on a project which has the following criteria:
- .NET / Java are OK but I’m a C/C# developer mainly. I have little experience with Java toolkits.
- I need something along the lines of prefuse (http://prefuse.org) for information visualization.
- I need a large collection of ‘ready to go’ components. .NET / Java see the most widely extended use. Things like a VNC control or library, graphing, etc.
- Portability over looks, I need something comfortable to use, and a GUI designer.
- All components of the IDE must work fine on Windows 7 64-bit. Or Linux amd64.
So far I tested:
- Eclipse with SWT + Visual Editor: broken 64bit support, the 32bit one truly works horrible. I can’t seem to find the toolbox of controls etc, and everything is dumped into the Java Beans menu. I’m also a total noob with Java GUI code. I would like to have something half as epic as prefuse for visualization, though, for .NET.
- Lots of experience with .NET, but I am not sure I would be able to interact all the components in Mono for instance. Compatibility issues would suck… so I’m kind of out of luck.
Let me know.
I use Netbeans and love it. Simple to use and uses Swing not SWT for its GUI’s which should get you 100% cross platform support.