Review: Visaj puts on a good face

Visaj 2.0 from Imperial Software Technology (IST) is an interface construction set for Java that is itself written entirely in Java. Running on any Java Development Kit 1.1-compliant Java virtual machine, this cross-platform package addresses the needs of IT professionals looking to streamline the development of interfaces for Java programs.

Fast interface construction

The strength of Visaj is its Visual Class Editor. This straightforward editor delivers fast interface construction from a palette of components and JavaBeans-compliant classes. As you select components from the palette, Visaj adds them to the hierarchical tree of Java classes. When you select an item from the tree, Visaj displays the available editable properties for that item.

The Layout Editor makes easy work of manipulating object orientation by automating the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) GridBag and Border layout schemes.

Visaj goes beyond supporting all AWT classes by supporting its own set of Diamonds -- collections of JavaBeans that add beneficial controls to your interface, including tool and status bars, sliders and progress meters, a SuperGrid layout, and a tabbed panel class. The Visaj palette supports any JavaBeans-compliant additions.

Once all of your components and Beans have been amassed, the Event Editor provides the mechanism to dynamically wire the interactions between various objects. Simply drawing a line between components invokes the Event Wizard.

In this version of Visaj, the Event Editor supports passing JavaBeans properties as method arguments, as well as multiargument methods. As the appropriate code is attached to an event, the dynamic on-screen display immediately reflects the modification and allows you to test it. I have yet to see an easier means of associating events with methods between JavaBeans.

Swing, swing, swing

Sun's Java Foundation Classes (JFC) extend the AWT with a set of lightweight components known as Swing. These classes provide what Sun terms a "pluggable look-and-feel" architecture to the platform on which a Java program is running, without native code or platform-specific dependence. In other words, when run under Windows, a Java program using Swing looks and behaves like a Windows program. But Swing's greatest benefit is realized in the capability to implement it with, typically, only half of the customary classes.

Visaj 2.0 supports a majority of JFC Swing components, and provides full access to the properties of child components within Swing super-classes. Visaj also provides a Box Layout Editor with support for glue and strut components, which helps with the layout and spacing of complex constructions.

Although Visaj does not support Swing in its entirety, it sports one of the finest implementations of Swing that I have seen so far.

Clean code

Visaj produces well-documented, 100 percent Java code, an improvement over the bundled classes I have seen spit out by other packages. In addition, Visaj does not overwrite your own hand-coded modifications.

Visaj provides several other bells and whistles, including a fine tool for implementing internationalization support and a decent tutorial to get you off and running.

Visaj does not pretend to be a complete integrated development environment (IDE). But what it does, it does well: it provides compilation-ready interface code for your Java project's front end. Visaj integrates into Sun's Java Workshop, and IST expects to add support for other IDEs by August.

Visually refined and intuitive, Visaj is one of the fastest available means of developing a professional Java interface.