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Advanced Synth

By Michael Abernethy
2005-04-16

Custom UIs are a Breeze with the Newest Swing Look and Feel
Take an in-depth look at the Synth look and feel, the newest addition to Swing introduced in Java 5.0. Synth lets developers rapidly create and deploy custom looks for an application by introducing the concept of a "skin" to Java UI programming. Software Engineer Michael Abernethy takes you through Synth concepts step-by-step to build an application with a Synth look from scratch. After reading this article, you should be able to create professional-looking UIs in no time.

Even as Sun continues its attempt to "reintroduce the Java Desktop," one complaint keeps surfacing from Java UI developers: It's far too difficult to create a complete custom look and feel. Not only is the effort too time consuming, but the Swing UI code is poorly written and poorly documented, often looking hacked together and badly planned. Creating a complete look and feel has required developers to subclass either the Metal look and feel's 39 classes or the Basic look and feel's 60 classes. Who the heck wants to override an entire package to change the way an application looks? Another sure indicator of how difficult it is to create a custom look and feel in Swing is that in an age when many developers donate their hard work for free to open source projects, barely any custom Swing look and feels are available on the Internet -- about 20 in all, including only a handful on SourceForge.net (see Resources).



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First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
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