Is there any way to improve IDEA 9 Community Edition Look&Feel?

Question

Earlier versions of IDEA had their own skin and looked really nice. But fresh 9CE version has really strange look&fells included: default is IDEA 4.5 (!!!) that looks like apps in 1998, also there is "windows" (everybody knows that java "windows" style doesn't look like windows) and several other styles taken from linux. Oh, yes, I forgot about metal )) It's really hard to work with such ugly IDE.

So my question is if it is possible to use old IDEA's theme (e.g. it was available in 9 Beta)? Or any other ideas how to improve its look&feel? Or maybe its only mine problem and others have normal skin installed?

Answer 1

Previous IDEA versions used third-party commercial Look&Feel called Alloy. Unfortunately, it has many issues and is no longer maintained (the latest release was in 2003). As it's a commercial L&F, we have no license to bundle it with a free open-source version of our product (IDEA Community Edition). It's still available in the Ultimate Edition, however. If you have a license for this Look&Feel you can install and use it separately with the Community Edition.

On Windows we are all very happy with the Windows Look&Feel, you even get ClearType support in the menus and editor automatically (your OS settings are used), which is not possible with Alloy and many other Look&Feels.

In any case, if you don't like it, you can install any third-party Look&Feel into the JVM used by IDEA to run and then select it in Settings | Appearance.

Answer 2

Is is possible to append more thirdparty Look&Feels to the appearance list? I don't want to force the Look&Feel into the JVM used by IDEA.