The Oracle Java Swing documentation for layout managers seems to imply that SpringLayout is an option when choosing a layout manager. (“SpringLayout is a flexible layout manager designed for use by GUI builders.”) It does not show up as an option in NetBeans GUI Builder v.7.0. It’s also very hard to find help on this subject – my questions have gone unanswered at the netbeans.org forum.
The Spring layout, as described in Java Swing doc, makes a lot of sense to me and I’d like to give it a try. Can it be added to NetBeans IDE and utilized when designing my GUI? What, specifically, do I need to download?
EDIT: removed reference to unrelated “Spring Framework”
The simple answer is this: NetBeans does not have support for the SpingLayout.
The GUI builder has been updated though in terms of it’s GridBagLayout designer. Have you tried that? It’s not quite the granularity offered with SpringLayout, but with the new builder tool, making very precise layouts is a breeze!