I'm starting an open source Java project and I need a few bits of advice.
Should I use an IDE such as Netbeans to create the UI (swing) or should I do it by hand. Is there an easy way to do GUI using the Eclipse IDE?
What's a good way to do the file structure? workspace/PROJECT/? Like where should I place the main class?
Don't think there is really a best way to do the gui, depends on the complexity of the gui and personal preferences. Lots of people like GUI designers and others prefer to handle the layout themselves. For eclipse there are some plugins around such as jigloo
For project structure I'd suggest using the maven layout.
Visual Editor for Eclipse. Netbeans default support for GUI building is also great.
Hand-coding the GUI can be interesting from a learning perspective, but when you have deadlines to meet, you might not want to "waste" time doing things that could be much easily done using a good tool, IMO.