I have just realized that the VE (Visual Editor) project does not support Eclipse versions above 3.2. Moreover, the project seems to be dead, and even if there are a few people who seems to be active in the project mail list, the overall look scene is not very promising.

I am just starting a new project which will be open source, and it will use Java Swing for the UI. There is simply no free UI designer that I can use for Eclipse 3.3 or 3.4.

Matisse4MyEclipse is supported by MyEclipse (I’m one of their customers) and Instantiations have their very impressive Window Builder product. However, none of these give me the ability to just put my source online so that other people can download it and play with it using the same set of tools that I’ve used. Eclipse has become a very solid and rich platform, but UI designer functionality is in a very sad state.

Just because of this, I’ll have to use Netbeans, because I can not expect people to hand code Java Swing UI in the year 2008! Instantiations provides open source licences, but this would not allow people who download my code to use the same set of tools (I guess)

As a result, whatever I do will have to be done on Netbeans instead of Eclipse only because of this situation. I cant’ believe that there  is no single free UI designer for Eclipse now.