LAF : Java Glossary

LAF

Look And Feel. Swing has programmable look and feel. It can be made to look like Motif, Mac etc.

Mac L&F	Discovering Active L&Fs	Gotchas
Selecting Programmatically	Decorating	Learning More
Command Line	Icons	Books
Discovering Installed L&Fs	Overriding	Links

Mac L&F

The Mac LAF is disabled except for Mac platforms. This is restriction is fairly easy to defang so that you can test your multi-platform code, without buying Mac. Just change this method:

public boolean isSupportedLookAndFeel()
   {
   return isNativeLookAndFeel();
   }

to this one:

public boolean isSupportedLookAndFeel()
   {
   return true;
   }

However, if you released code that did that, the Apple lawyers would be down your neck. Even if you used the third party QuaQua L&F that more closely mimics the Mac OS X UI than Sun’s L&F does, you would get in legal trouble if your app allowed QuaQua to run on anything but a Mac, except for development testing. If you use QuaQua, you must bundle the quaqua.jar with your application/Applet and ensure it is on the classpath.

Selecting L&F Programmatically

Note there are two techniques of setting a L&F. You can either do pass a new LookAndFeel object or the name of the LookAndFeel class as a String. The advantage of the first approach is the compiler will check that the L&F actually exists at compile time, preventing you from making a typo. The advantage of the second approach is you don’t need the L&F code present at compile time. Further you don’t bundle any L&F code in your jar.

Using the Nimbus look & feel that comes with JDK 1.6.0_10+, is tricky since the class file that implements it might not be present. You want at all costs to avoid a NoClassDefFoundError.

Selecting L&F On the Command Line

You can also set the default look and feel on the command line:

Discovering Installed L&Fs

Discovering Active L&Fs

// discovering the current active Look and Feel
LookAndFeel laf = UIManager.getLookAndFeel();
String lafName = laf.getName();

Decorating

You can further improve the look with: JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated( true );

L&F Icons

You can use the get at the current L&F icons with code like this:

// Get an icon that looks just like the one the L&F uses
// for closing internal frames.
Icon closeIcon = UIManager.getIcon( "InternalFrame.closeIcon" );

Overriding

You can override colours in a given L&F with code like this:

// overriding a colour in the L&F
UIManager.put( "TabbedPane.selected", Color.RED );

The values you can feed to UIManager.put are undocumented, but you can learn about them by studying the source code in src.zip for javax.swing.basic. BasicLookAndFeel. java.

Another approach is to write your own Look & Feel that extends some other one, and just overrides a few font-defining methods or colour-defining methods. See this sample code for a writing a derived LAF.

Gotchas

If you change the L&F dynamically, sometimes parts of your app won’t change. You can find all frames and get them to refresh with code like this:
If you load your look and feel with a custom class loader, you must use this undocumented hook so that Swing will use your loader to look for LAF classes:
```
// persuade Swing to use your custom class loader to load LAF classes
UIManager.getDefaults().put( "ClassLoader", loader );
```
Nimbus LAF is part of JDK 1.0.6_10+, but it is not the default. It does not use any bit map graphics. It uses scalable 2D graphics and gradients. It has hardware acceleration support. It seems to render JTable columns and JSpinners larger, but the layout managers do not seem to notice. You must manually pad their sizes.
On the Macintosh, you usually use the command clover key ⌘ to copy/paste. With most look and feels, this stops working. You must use the Control key instead. To leave it as native, you need to use the UIManager. getSystemLookAndFeelClassName(). Arggh! would it have been that hard to make both keys work?

Learning More

Sun’s Product Info on Swing L&F Style Guide

Sun’s Product Info on Swing L&F Advanced Style Guide

Sun’s Product Info on Creating a Custom Look & Feel

Sun’s Javadoc on LookAndFeel class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_17 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_22 on your local Windows J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on UIDefaults class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_17 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_22 on your local Windows J: drive.

Sun’s Javadoc on UIManager class : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_17 or in the old JDK 1.5.0_22 on your local Windows J: drive.

Sun’s JDK Technote Guide on Nimbus : available:

on the web at java.sun.com
in the current JDK 1.6.0_17 on your local Windows J: drive.

Books

recommend book⇒Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines (2nd Edition)

paperback

ISBN13:

978-0-201-72588-9

publisher:

Addison-Wesley

published:

2001-03-19

by:

Sun Microsystems

This book contains no code. It about how to design a good UI using Metal as an example. It contains Sun’s standards for how many pixels to use for various purposes.

	abe books.co.uk	abe books.ca
	amazon.co.uk	amazon.ca
	abe books.de	chapters.indigo.ca
	amazon.de	abe books.com
	abe books.fr	amazon.com
	amazon.fr	barnes and noble.com
	abe books.it	powells.com
	iberlibro.com	sony e-books
	abe books anz

recommend book⇒Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics

paperback

ISBN13:

978-0-201-77582-2

publisher:

Addison-Wesley

published:

2001-12-27

by:

Sun Microsystems

It is about how to design a good UI using Metal as an example.

	abe books.co.uk	abe books.ca
	amazon.co.uk	amazon.ca
	abe books.de	chapters.indigo.ca
	amazon.de	abe books.com
	abe books.fr	amazon.com
	amazon.fr	barnes and noble.com
	abe books.it	powells.com
	iberlibro.com	sony e-books
	abe books anz

recommend book⇒GUI Bloopers: Don’ts and Do’s for Software Developers and Web Designers

paperback

ISBN13:

978-1-55860-582-4

publisher:

Morgan Kaufmann

published:

2000-03-17

by:

Jeff Johnson

Works by analysing 82 examples of bad design.

	abe books.co.uk	abe books.ca
	amazon.co.uk	amazon.ca
	abe books.de	chapters.indigo.ca
	amazon.de	abe books.com
	abe books.fr	amazon.com
	amazon.fr	barnes and noble.com
	abe books.it	powells.com
	iberlibro.com	sony e-books
	abe books anz

Alloy L&F: commercial, 4 variants, glass effect
changing default fonts
decorated
EaSynth L&F
GUI
Infonode L&F: very simple
JavooToo Look & Feel Collection
JGoodies Looks L&F
JGoodies Looks Plastic L&F
JGoodies Looks Windows L&F
JTattoo L&F: commercial, free for freeware authors, 10 variants
Lipstik L&F: bold high contrast
Liquid L&F: 3D oval clear bubbles
Microsoft Vista User Experience (L&F) guide
Napkin L&F: for presenting prototype ideas, pencil scribbling
NimROD L&F: bold colours, several variants
Office L&F: close copy of Microsoft look
Oyoaha L&F: with many pluggable monochrome themes
Pgs L&F: similar to Vista
Quaqua L&F: like native OS X
skin
SkinLF: over 20 L&Fs, supports GTK and KDE skins
Squareness L&F: minimalist, flat
Substance L&F: with component-level scaling, and skins on top of the L&F. Precise looking
Swing
Synthetica L&F: commercial, bland
Tiny L&F: minimalist, flat
Tonic L&F: like themes used in the Windows NT days

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