Custom SWT controls and layouts

Question

What custom controls and layouts for SWT/JFace do you use?

Preferably, list one per answer.

Answer 1

Novocode controls: Balloon tooltips, hyperlinks, size grips, internal frames. Open source.

Answer 2

Nebula Project:

• Widgets
• CalendarCombo
• CDateTime
• CollapsibleButtons
• CompositeTable
• DateChooser
• FormattedText
• Gallery
• GanttChart
• Grid
• PaperClips
• PGroup
• PShelf
• RadioGroup
• TableCombo
• XViewer

Open source.

Answer 3

SwtForms: A partial port of JGoodies Forms to SWT. Open source.

Answer 4

MiGLayout: "The Java Layout Manager for Swing, SWT and JavaFX"

Answer 5

The SWT Win32 Extension is...

a software development kit enabling you to work with native code from Java programs without using JNI. With SWT Win32 Extension, you don't need to create native libraries to call a function of the operating system API or a function from any dynamic library. You write code in the Java language only, and SWT Win32 Extension does the rest. SWT Win32 Extension provides quite a number of integration features to make your Java application look and behave like a Win32 citizen.

• Window Decorations: making windows always-on-top, transparent, flashing on the taskbar, etc.
• Custom Shape Window: creating non-rectangular windows using custom Regions.
• Access to Windows Registry.
• Shell Folders: getting paths and icons of the user folders (Favorites, My Pictures, etc)
• Shell Links: managing the system link files.
• System Info: gathering CPU, memory, system variables information.
• Hooks: using system hooks and allowing to intercept some system events.
• System Menu Manager: managing the shell system menu, user can define custom menu item.
• Windows Session: managing system session. User can logoff, shutdown, reboot computer.
• Ole Control: providing some ole control wrappers, such as flash.
• Specially, you can get a lot of functions via SWT, because SWT Win32 Extension extends SWT.

Answer 6

Controls:
1. All nebula widgets (http://www.eclipse.org/nebula/)
3. KTable (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ktable/)

Layouts: See http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Understanding-Layouts/index.html

I mostly use GridLayout and GridData since I think it fits best for composites with many children and I don't have to set any widths and heights => it will probably look ok on lower resolution displays.