How can I dynamically alter the Java LAF UIDefaults?

Question

I'm working on cusomizing a Swing application by dynamically altering the UIDefaults. The end goal is to alter many of them (colors, fonts, sizes, borders, etc) and save the result on a per user basis. While it may give the application some non-standard looks, the client asketh and the client shall receive.

The only problem I'm running into is that GUI will only update ONCE. The first time I change a ui property everthing is great, subsequent changes don't affect anything.

// called from the EDT
// uiKeyName points to some ColorUIResource
UIManager.getDefaults().put(uiKeyName, <<color from color picker>>);
SwingUtilties.updateComponentTreeUI(rootWindow);

It works once, but never again. Ideas?

Answer 1

When you put the new color (for example) in the table, is it a Color object, or a ColorUIResource? As I understand it, the new value will only be taken up if the current value is null or an instance of UIResource. Thus, if you insert a plain old Color object, any subsequent changes you make will be ignored.

Also, as the linked doc page suggests, this may only help with the font and foreground/background colors; when it comes to changing things like borders and margins, you may be out of luck. This is not what Swing's Pluggable LookAndFeels were designed for. Maybe you could interest the client in a Synth-based LAF?