Pluggable look and feel

Pluggable look and feelis a mechanism used in theJavaSwingwidget toolkitallowing to change thelook and feelof thegraphical user interfaceat runtime.

Swing allows an application to specialize the look and feel of widgets by modifying the default (via runtime parameters), deriving from an existing one, by creating one from scratch, or, beginning withJ2SE 5.0,by using theskinnablesynthlook and feel, which is configured with anXMLproperty file. The look and feel can be changed at runtime.

Architecture

The correspondingAPIincludes:

• HooksinSwingwidgetsto interact with their look and feel. Each widget defined in Swing can delegate its "painting" to its associateduser interfaceclasses calledUI delegates.
• An API to manage existing look-and-feel definitions. This API allow to set the look and feel or switch from look and feels at runtime.
• Another API to define a specific look and feel, or derive a look and feel from an existing one.

Examples of look and feels

Platform look and feels

The default OceanTheme Metal look and feel in JDK 5

TheJava platformcomes with several bundled look and feels:

• A defaultcross-platformlook and feel, calledMetal(seeMetalLookAndFeel). This look and feel comes with severalthemes:
  • TheDefaultMetalTheme,which was historically the first Swing default theme.
  • The smootherOceanTheme,which became the default theme forJava 5.0.
• Other cross-platform look and feels:
  • Askinnablelook and feel calledsynth(seesynth), which is configured with anXMLproperty file.
  • TheNimbuslook and feel (based onsynth), which is added for theJava SE 6 Update 10.
• Platform-dependent look and feels:Look and feels that aim to be the closest as possible to the platform native GUI. The fidelity to the native look-and-feel theming has been improved in recent Java versions by leveraging the platform native GUItheminglibrary when possible
  • AWindowslook and feel (this look and feel depends on the version of the Windows Operating System),
  • AMotiforGTK+(for newer distributions) look and feel onLinuxorSolaris,
  • A specific vendor look and feel forIBM AIX,HP-UX,andMac OS X.

Third-party look and feels

Numerous other look and feels have been developed by third parties, such as:

• FlatLaf,open-source, "looks almost flat", themed, scales on HiDPI displays, for JDK8+
• Insubstantial,a maintenance fork of Substance
• JGoodies,Windows and plastic look and feels
• Liquid,which aim to look like theLiquidtheme forKDE
• Napkin,which can be used to make GUI work look provisional
• Substance,askinnablelook and feel
• Synthetica,based onsynth

See also

• Look and feel
• Swing

External links

• List of Java look and feels
• Oracle's tutorial on setting the look and feel in Java
• Oracle's tutorial overview of the pluggable look and feel mechanism
• Swing pluggable look and feel architecture
• Swing pluggable look and feel linksatCurlie