Java GUI libraries

Question

I have been working with the Swing library for a long time, I'm working on a new project for school and due to the nature of the program it can't look like a generic/boring swing gui. So my question is does anyone know of an interesting java gui library that is not swing or awt?

Answer 1

The Standard Widget Toolkit : http://www.eclipse.org/swt/

Answer 2

I think that SWT/JFace (come with Eclipse but can supposedly be used standalone) are well designed and more interesting to use/learn. For example, JFace follows sort of an MVC approach.

Answer 3

JavaFX perhaps?

Answer 4

If you think that Swing produces boring UIs then you really need to get this book: Filthy Rich Clients.

Answer 5

You could just use a new Look & Feel.

Answer 6

Take a look at JavaFX. It is designed to be very flashy.

Answer 7

I don't think you need to look at different GUI libraries, I think you need to look at different Look & Feels, I quite like Synthetica, plus some of their Look & Feels are free for non-commercial applications.

Answer 8

Well, if you use Java 6u10+, you can use the new Swing GUI option, Nimbus.

UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel");

Answer 9

Try JGoodies

http://www.jgoodies.com/

Answer 10

You can also try Java Scenegraph "standalone" (ie. using only java + scenario, not javafx). But its documentation is not very good. Here's a code sample, using the scenegraph 1.0 ("Scenario.jar" shipped with JavaFX).

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Paint;
import java.awt.geom.Point2D;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;

import com.sun.scenario.scenegraph.JSGPanel;
import com.sun.scenario.scenegraph.SGGroup;
import com.sun.scenario.scenegraph.fx.FXText;



public class HelloWorldScenario101 implements Runnable {



    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new HelloWorldScenario101());
    }



    public HelloWorldScenario101() {
        //
    }



    @Override
    public void run() {

        this.frame = new JFrame();
        this.panel = new JSGPanel();
        this.text = new FXText();
        this.paint = new Color(255, 0, 0, 255);

        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setTitle("Hello World");
        frame.add(this.panel);
        frame.setContentPane(this.panel);
        scene = new SGGroup();
        this.text.setText("Hello World");
        this.text.setFillPaint(this.paint);
        this.text.setLocation(new Point2D.Float(10, 10));
        this.scene.add(this.text);
        this.panel.setScene(scene);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationByPlatform(true);
        frame.setVisible(true);

    }



    private JFrame frame;

    private JSGPanel panel;

    private SGGroup scene;

    private FXText text;

    private Paint paint;



}

Answer 11

I would strongly suggest Qt Jambi if it wasn't discontinued. You can check out the demo to see what your application will look like.
I am still waiting to see how the community driven effort will evolve before deciding to abandon it but I wouldn't start something that matters to me in Qt Jambi right now, but I think that it would be a good fit for your situation.