How do I create a GUI to customize content using Java?

This is for my Java programming assignment, and I've only been working with Jav开发者_运维知识库a for about 3 months. We need something simple, so I thought of going with a program that allows the user to customise and design a greeting card cover. Not too complex, it's an introductory course. I would really like some guidelines on how to go about this, and if there is some existing code available. We are allowed to refer to existing codes to create our program as long as we include it as a reference. So far I can only think of something that can allow custom borders, or a bunch of existing borders as options, fonts, colours and background choices, either colours or textures. I would appreciate all the help I can get. Thanks.

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You could use Jasper reports and create different templates with thumbnails for greeting cards. User would fill the required fields and select thumb of report template. You would then load and preview the selected report.

If you would like more complex solution, you could create "plugin engine" which would allow user to load custom Jasper report templates. You could then save the plugin reports data in xml file. That should be more than enough for any school project.

You could use your knowlege in any future project since you would learn how to create reports, how to create xml files and a lot more ... Most application today use reports and xml files so it would be more than useful knowledge.