CodeGear announced it has teamed with Instantiations to fully integrate the Instantiations Swing Designer visual layout tools into CodeGear JBuilder, making it the commercial Java IDE to include this technology.

Java developers using JBuilder will now be able to construct more sophisticated and reliable Swing-based graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that enhance the user experience for enterprise applications. In addition, JBuilder developers will have complete control over how they develop their GUI code as a result of Swing Designer’s bi-directional code generation, round-trip editing capabilities, and comprehensive support for Swing layouts, controls, containers, and other capabilities.

CodeGear plans to offer Swing Designer as a fully integrated feature of its Java IDE with the introduction of JBuilder 2008 later this year. For customers eager to get started with this new capability now, CodeGear is currently offering a promotional bundle of the Instantiations Swing Designer with any new or upgrade purchase of JBuilder 2007.

"There is a great deal of innovation coming from Eclipse Foundation members like CodeGear and Instantiations," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation. "Combining the individual innovation from these two member companies into an integrated offering allows developers to make more productive use of the Eclipse platform, and is a perfect example of our vision in action."

JBuilder 2007 is an IDE built on the open source Eclipse framework, which makes collaborative development of Java SE, Java EE, and Web-based applications faster and more reliable. It combines the advantages of the Eclipse framework with innovative rapid application development (RAD) functionality, ease-of-use and productivity, and team development capabilities that help developers and organizations more effectively manage complex projects across locations and teams.

Instantiations Swing Designer is designed exclusively for the Eclipse framework. With the fully integrated Swing Designer, Java developers using JBuilder can quickly and visually create rich user interfaces, easily add controls using drag-and-drop, add event handlers to controls, and change properties of controls using a familiar object inspector. Unlike alternative solutions, the Swing Designer transparently handles code generation without proprietary markers or fragile intermediate files.

“Swing Designer has been meeting the needs of Java developers since 2004, enabling them to create rock-solid user interfaces for enterprise applications,” said Mike Taylor, Instantiations CEO. “Combining Swing Designer, part of our WindowBuilder product family, with CodeGear JBuilder gives Java developers an unparalleled and powerful development platform.”

“We’re all familiar with the Java GUI solutions of late which are either feature light, too fragile, or inject proprietary footprints. Java GUI developers have been vocal about wanting a more advanced out-of-the-box GUI construction experience and feature set that is easy-to-use and fully source-code driven,” said Michael Swindell, CodeGear Vice President of Products and Strategy. “We’ve integrated the Instantiations Swing Designer into JBuilder to meet these expectations, and are excited to be the only Java IDE vendor to have such an offering.”