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Feel Good GUI

 
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I am using Swing to create the GUI. One of the pull down menus, on click opens a JDialog, which takes in an ID (primary key) and I display 4 (fixed) values for that ID from the DB table.

Although, I have a completely working code, I am not too happy with the gui look. It doesn't "feel good". I just have a JTextfield to take in the ID and a button to press which retrieves the 4 values and places them in 4 different uneditable JTextFields.

How would I make it more....umm...acceptable (for lack of a better word) to users?

What would you like to see in a GUI, in such a scenario?

Any help would be appreciated !!
[ January 31, 2007: Message edited by: Russell Peters ]
 
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perhaps one scenario:

JList/JScrollPane on left
4 x JTextFields(or JLabels) on right (aligned vertically)

load all the primary keys into the JList
selecting an item from the list populates the textfields/labels with the relative data

if the number of primary keys is large, perhaps add a 'find' feature for the list
 
Russell Peters
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Thats a nice idea. However I dont have a list of ID's. So instead of a list I am going to put in a JTextField for simplicity.

Any more suggestions ?


Thanks
 
Michael Dunn
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if you can get the data from the db for the 4 textfields by querying the
primary key, can't you also get all the primary keys to make a list?
 
Russell Peters
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Originally posted by Michael Dunn:
if you can get the data from the db for the 4 textfields by querying the
primary key, can't you also get all the primary keys to make a list?



I am sorry. I meant that the user enters the primary key in the textfield, which is what I use to get the record from the DB. Its an extremely simple query which simply returns the physical location of the particular object in the huge inventory store. This info is used by the user to physically retrieve the object (kinda like a manual override). So they just need the physical location for the object they are searching on. One at a time.

The use case doesn't define the need for any reporting mechanism wherein it would be useful to simply list all the primary keys. Secondly, there may be millions of records in the DB, so it wouldnt be a good idea to list all or to list a few( which again brings another question as to how to decide which ones i list).

I am keeping it simple....unless the business comes and tells me they want different !
 
Michael Dunn
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the 'millions of records' bit kills my idea.

to get you a better look, this link might give you some ideas

http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/forms/index.html
 
Russell Peters
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I have been using TableLayout as the Layout System for my GUIs. But thanks for the link. Should help out a little more in designing better GUIs
[ February 01, 2007: Message edited by: Russell Peters ]
 
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