Comment on GUI..

[Suresh Babu]

Hi Friends,
Thanks for your valuable time.. please comment on my design which will help me to improve.. design
My gui contains two panels, one is search pannel and other one is result panel. Search panel has origin combobox, destination combo box, carrier combobox,searchbutton and exit button.
Result panel contains JTable and book button at the bottom.
like

  
  ------------------------------
  |     origin Combo            |
  |     dest   Combo    Search  |
  |     carrierCombo    Exit    |  Search panel
  |                             |
  |-----------------------------|
  |                             |
  |                             |
  |       JTable result         |  Resutl Panel
  |                             |
  |                             |
  |-----------------------------|
  |          bookButton         |
  |-----------------------------|

If user clicks on search panel.. records will be displaced in JTable area. Now user can select the flight that he/she want to book , then click on book button. Then another child window will open
with all flight detail(price,origin,desitn..etc.. and "Enter seats" + textbox for seats).

Doubts:
1. Is this design meets the sun's requirement?
2. Any suggestions to improve above design
3.I am confused how to populate child window with all details.. can I use JDialog or JOption Pane for this. How you guys have implemented it?

I appreciate your help
[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: Suresh Babu ]

[Michael Morris]

Hi Suresh,
Your search mechanism is almost identical to mine.
Your booking is somewhat similar, except that I had a booking panel that followed the selected row in the table. But your method is just as effective. So I would say that your GUI design looks pretty good. You probably want to consider adding a menu though to cinch a perfect score on the GUI.
Hope this helps,
Michael Morris

[George Lawniczak]

The main difference I have is that I use a horizontal split panel with my search panel on the left and the results JTable on the right. I don't have a book button, but the user can bring up the book dialog by double-clicking on the flight, or clicking on the appropriate menu item or toolbar icon, or by simply pressing <CTRL-B>.
By using the horizontal split, I can add new search criteria without altering the number of flights being displayed. I just figured it is a better use of space.

[Suresh Babu]

Hi Michael & George,
Thanks for Your comments

You probably want to consider adding a menu though to cinch a perfect score on the GUI.

I will add menu to my GUI. I want to know what were componets have you added to menu & menu bar.
Could you please answer my 3rd question in original post.
Which pattern is good for this (GUI)..
MVC or Moderate pattern?. I am new to this design patterns as well as Swing.

[Mark Spritzler]

3.I am confused how to populate child window with all details.. can I use JDialog or JOption Pane for this. How you guys have implemented it?

What is a child window. Is this a popup that will display results of their booking? If so you can add a method to pop up messages, and inside you will use the JOptionPane. That is what I used to pop up messages.
Hoep that answers your question.
Mark

[Suresh Babu]

Hi Mark,
Sorry for late reply..

What is a child window. Is this a popup that will display results of their booking? If so you can add a method to pop up messages, and inside you will use the JOptionPane. That is what I used to pop up messages

Yes child window is popup window to display the
flight information and at the bottom it contains
Label : Enter the No of seats and Text Box to enter the number of seats.
Can I use JOptionPane (Information Message Type
[ August 30, 2002: Message edited by: Suresh Babu ]

[Mark Spritzler]

Yes you can use JOptionPane. I actually prefer JOptionPane because it is an object that Sun already provides for you, instead of re-inventing the wheel.
I hate reinventing the wheel, because each time it will come out square first then a dodecahedren. Then one time it came out as a triangle, I mean can you imagine the embarrasment I had trying to explain to my boss how a triangle wheel was far superior to anything that Firestone puts out.
Mark

[Suresh Babu]

Hi Mark,
Thanks for quick reply.

regards,
Suresh

[harcharan kanwal]

hi all,
thanks to those who are sharing their views on this forum.
i am using MVC pattern in my gui design.
my question is:-
I have three ComboBoxes mainly for Carrier, Origin and Destination.Should i populate these
ComboBoxes having a reference to my Model of MVC pattern for my gui or should i just get
a reference of DataClient directly in the gui and populate these ComboBoxes? As i see this
changes in the size of these comboboxes only occurs ,if FBN enhances its capacity to hold more
flights,which is not a every minute operation.
For right now i am thinking of having the following items in my Model,which i think will be
changing constantly.
1.carrier
2.origin
3.destination
4.search results depends upon the seach string
5.something related to booking of a record (DataInfo)
I hope ,this make sense to you guys.
Any thoughts
thanks,
harcharan

[harcharan kanwal]

someone reply to this question.mark where are you