Graphical User Interface Builder

Short description: Software development tool

NetBeans GUI builder

A graphical user interface builder (or GUI builder), also known as GUI designer or sometimes RAD IDE, is a software development tool that simplifies the creation of GUIs by allowing the designer to arrange graphical control elements (often called widgets) using a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor. Without a GUI builder, a GUI must be built by manually specifying each widget's parameters in the source code, with no visual feedback until the program is run. Such tools are usually called the term RAD IDE.

User interfaces are commonly programmed using an event-driven architecture, so GUI builders also simplify creating event-driven code. This supporting code connects software widgets with the outgoing and incoming events that trigger the functions providing the application logic.

Some graphical user interface builders automatically generate all the source code for a graphical control element. Others, like Interface Builder or Glade Interface Designer, generate serialized object instances that are then loaded by the application.

List of GUI builders

C Language Based

GTK / Glade Interface Designer
Motif
XForms (toolkit) fdesign
Intrinsics

C# Based

UWP / Windows Presentation Foundation / WinForms
- Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout
- Microsoft Expression Blend
- SharpDevelop
Xamarin.Forms / .NET Core
- Xamarin Studio

C++ Based

UWP / Windows Presentation Foundation / WinForms
- Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout
- Microsoft Blend
Qt (toolkit)
- Qt Creator
FLTK
- FLUID
JUCE
- Projucer
U++
- theIDE
wxWidgets
- wxGlade
- wxFormBuilder
- wxCrafter (plugin for CodeLite)

Objective-C / Swift Based

Cocoa (modern) and Carbon (deprecated).
- Xcode
GNUstep (formerly OpenStep)
- Gorm

Java-Based

Android Studio, XML-based GUI layout
NetBeans GUI design tool
SceneBuilder^[1]

HTML/Javascript Based

DreamWeaver from Adobe (Web Application User Interface Builders) — Obsolete as of 2022
Apache Cordova / PhoneGap

Object Pascal Based

Delphi / VCL (Visual Component Library)
Lazarus / LCL (Lazarus Component Library)

Flutter Framework Based

Flutter
- FlutterFlow,^[2]
- FlutterStudio,^[3]
- Nowa App builder,^[4]
- Blup - Visual Flutter app builder
- flutterflow

Tk Framework Based

Tk (framework)
- ActiveState Komodo (No longer^[when?] has a GUI builder)

Visual Basic Based

UWP / Windows Presentation Foundation / WinForms
- Microsoft Visual Studio XAML Editor, XAML based GUI layout
- Microsoft Expression Blend

Other tools

Adobe Animate
App Inventor for Android
AutoIt
Axure RP
Crank AMETEK Storyboard
Creately
Embedded Wizard
GEM
Interface Builder
LucidChart
OpenWindows
Resource construction set
Stetic
Scaleform
Wavemaker

List of development environments

IDEs with GUI builders (RAD IDEs)

4D
ActiveState Komodo (No longer^[when?] has a GUI builder)
Android Studio
Anjuta
AutoIt3
B4X
C++Builder
Crank AMETEK Storyboard
Clarion
Code
CodeLite
dBase
Delphi/RAD Studio
Embedded Wizard
Eclipse
Gambas
IntelliJ IDEA
JDeveloper
KDevelop
LabWindows/CVI
LANSA
Lazarus
Liberty BASIC
Microsoft Visual Studio
MonoDevelop
MSEide+MSEgui
MyEclipse
NetBeans
OutSystems
PascalABC.NET
Projucer
Purebasic
Qt Creator
SharpDevelop
Softwell Maker
U++
VisualFBEditor^[5]
VB6
WinFBE
Xcode
Xojo

References

↑ "Scene Builder". https://gluonhq.com/products/scene-builder/.
↑ "FlutterFlow - Build Native Apps Visually". https://flutterflow.io/.
↑ "FlutterStudio". https://flutterstudio.app/.
↑ "FALL IN LOVE WITH BUILDING APPS". https://nowa.dev/.
↑ Speed, Richard (2022-05-06). "RAD Basic – the Visual Basic 7 that never was – releases third alpha". https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/rad_basic_alpha_3/. "RAD Basic is not the only game in town. Alternatives in varying stages of development include twinBASIC, which also aims to be backward compatible with VB6 and VBA; and FreeBASIC, which implements much of what lurked in Microsoft QuickBASIC (and has a nifty IDE in the form of VisualFBEditor)."

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Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical user interface builder. Read more

[1] "Scene Builder". https://gluonhq.com/products/scene-builder/.

[2] "FlutterFlow - Build Native Apps Visually". https://flutterflow.io/.

[3] "FlutterStudio". https://flutterstudio.app/.

[4] "FALL IN LOVE WITH BUILDING APPS". https://nowa.dev/.

[5] Speed, Richard (2022-05-06). "RAD Basic – the Visual Basic 7 that never was – releases third alpha". https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/rad_basic_alpha_3/. "RAD Basic is not the only game in town. Alternatives in varying stages of development include twinBASIC, which also aims to be backward compatible with VB6 and VBA; and FreeBASIC, which implements much of what lurked in Microsoft QuickBASIC (and has a nifty IDE in the form of VisualFBEditor)."

v t e Widgets (List of …)
Command input	Adjustment handle Button Context menu Drop-down list Hamburger button Menu Pie menu
Data input-output	Checkbox Color picker Combo box Cycle button Date picker Grid view Light switch List box List builder Radio button Scrollbar Search box Slider Spinner Text box
Informational	Balloon help Head-up display in computing Head-up display in video games Icon Infobar Label Loading screen Progress indicator Progress bar Splash screen Throbber Sidebar Status bar Toast Tooltip
Containers	Accordion Tree view Client-Side Decoration Disclosure widget Frame/Fieldset Menu bar Panel Popover Ribbon Tab Toolbar Window Window decoration Workspace
Navigational	Address bar Breadcrumb Hyperlink Navigation bar Virtual desktop
Special windows	Alert dialog box Dialog box File dialog Inspector window Modal window Palette window
Related concepts	File viewer List of graphical user interface elements Layout manager Look and feel Mouseover Widget toolkit WIMP