Resources about how to develop a Java look and feel

Question

Hi everyone!

I'd like to learn more about developing a Java look and feel. Could anybody please give me some web adresses where i can find resources about laf development?

Thanks in advance,

David

Answer 1

• How to Write a Custom Look and Feel
• Creating a Custom Look and Feel

Answer 2

I tried Googling for you but found the pickings slim, as you probably did too.

An approach that doesn't require external resources would be to simply download the Java library source code (you may need to sign up as a developer with SunOracle) and then to make your own copy of everything with the changes you want.

I've known a group in our company who tried to develop a company specific look and feel. They made a lot of stupid mistakes, such as making the checkboxes and radio buttons have the same shape; that took away information from the user.

Doing your own L&F is a lot of hard work. Maybe the most useful advice I can give you is to review whether you or the world really, truly need yet another Java look and feel. How is yours going to be different? Better? Are you prepared to invest the work to really polish it? To provide all the icons and images, all the procedural rendering for every variation of every component?

Answer 3

Writing a custom Look and Feel isn't your only option. You may also choose to build upon the Synth Look and Feel, which is a framework for developing L&Fs upon.

Nimbus is a well known Synth-based L&F, and is included in the OpenJDK 6 source code under /jdk/src/share/classes/com/sun/java/swing/plaf/nimbus