We have strong expertise in Java desktop user interface design. The good news is we can provide this expertise as a service to you through contracts.

Component Contracting

Having built Java Swing components for many years, we know very well about how to design a component, how to implement a component, how to integrate a component and how to productize a component. With a lot of existing code and features within various JIDE products, it is much faster for us to build a new component than you were to do it yourself. That's exactly why we provide the component contracting. If you need a component that we currently don't have, instead of building it yourself, you can always ask us to build it for you. It will be faster, cheaper and better.

For component contracting, we will charge the contract fee by the hours we spend in building this component. We only charge half our hourly rate as long as you allow us to include this new component into one of the JIDE products. In United States, most European and some Asian countries, this will make the cost lower than you do it yourself. Typically, we will estimate the total cost and tell you upfront, which means you have control the budget upper limit for the whole contract. What if we spend more hours than estimated? Don't worry. We will cover the additional cost, not you. And, we won't charge you for the hours we spend to productize the component (such as writing developer guide).

As a matter of fact, many of famous JIDE components are results of such component contracting. Here are a few - CellSpanTable, CellStyleTable, HierarchicalTable, TreeTable, JIDE Pivot Grid and yet to be released JIDE Code Editor.

LookAndFeel Contracting

LookAndFeel is a major part of Java/Swing. Many companies dream to have their own brand LookAndFeel so that they can use it all their applications as a company identity. However, building a LookAndFeel is not an easy thing. It requires a talented artistic design, a deep understanding of Swing's L&F architecture, and patience writing and debugging Java code to achieve the exact visual effect. We again can help you out in this case as we had experience making several LookAndFeels in the past.

For LookAndFeel contracting, we also charge by hours. Same as component contracting, we offer half the rate if you allow us to include the LookAndFeel into our products. Based on our previous experience, a typical length for this contract is from two weeks to two months, depending on how complex the LookAndFeel is.

Application Contracting

In application contracting, we will build the whole or part of application for you. Since we have expertise in user interface design, a reasonable division is you have your own developers to build the server part of the application and we build the client side. Because we know existing JIDE components so well, it will take us much shorter time to build the same interface than other people because we know how to leverage those components.

For application contracting, we usually charge by daily rate. The contracting can be done either onsite or remotely. If you prefer onsite, there will be additional cost for the traveling and lodging for the consultant.

For more details regarding our contracting service, please contact our services department at services@jidesoft.com.