For Years, Java Swing has suffered from poor UI colors and designs. Since the support of Java to let people desing their own Themes, it has revamped those old boring UIs.
When we talk about designing look and feel, we know it is about implementing different UI classes for different components.
Today, we can use Synth look and feel, which allow us to customize the look and feel by writing an XML file.
The other way is to use UIManager to load the L&F class directly from classpath. For which the code goes like this:
UIManager.setLookAndFeel("fully qualified name of look and feel");
The Look and Feel Libraries are broadly divided into two categories.
- Skinnable
- Non-Skinnable
Skinnable look and feel can’t only change the LAF of wigets in your application, but, can also change the look and feel of window title bars and borders. So here are few Professional and Casual themes that you can use to make your application much more attractive and vibrant:
Professional Themes
Nimbus
This is the theme that’s getting a lot of popularity, specially, after Solaris 10 adopted it.
Here’s how you can set it:
UIManager.setLookAndFeel("javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel");
Here’s a screenshot:
Substance
Substance has 6 different flavours for the metallic Look an Feel. The Good one is below. You can checkout other color schemes here (though they are not that attractive). Download
Sea Glass
This is relatively anew theme under development. This one is among the best I’ve seen around. It that mocks Mac-kind look inspired by different colored stones. You can checkout the details here.
Info Look And Feel
This one is based on the Metal look and feel. This is the one that you will find in most enterprise or commercial Java Apps. It’s designed to have a slim, clean appearance. It has support for themes. Works best for Windows, though looks decent on KDE as well. Download
Pgs Look And Feel
I would call this a windows and KDE/Gnome hybrid. It aims be a very modern cross-platform LAF with nice features. the UI components are not as-sleek-as-others. Download
Quaqua Look And Feel
The Quaqua LAF is an user interface library which adheres closest to Mac OS X. Download
Casual Themes
Oyaha
This one is a cool and trendy. It’s unique, as it features transparency, sounds and is Skinable. For the cool generations. Download
Liquid Look And Feel
Liquid gives the application a crystal effect on the buttons. It’s based on Mosfet’s Liquid 0.9.6 theme for KDE 3.x. Reminds of Candy theme from StyleXP. Download
JTattoo
JTattoo is skinnable and consists of several different LAF. User can customize the look by choosing among different available color schemes. Download
Make Java applications more attractive, and encourage Open Source, cheers.
I`ll keep on updating the list. Make sure you check back.
Do you know of any others? I`ll be happy to include them. Follow me on Twitter.
