I want to use the look and feel named SyntheticaBlackEye with my java application, so I downloaded the jar files of the look and feel from here then I put the jar file inside the library folder of my project then I set the look and feel like as follows. UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SyntheticaBlackEyeLookAndFeel). The KDE desktop environment uses the Oxygen theme by default. By default, Java applications don't follow this theme at all. The Joxy Look and Feel is a 'skin' to let Java Swing applications look like the Oxygen theme. Joxy is not an application itself, but a skin for other programs. For installation instructions, please see Joxy's website.
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Our Wiki givesyou a place to share ideas and advice with other folks. We've started it offwith some instructions about how to get Java applications to use Napkin fortheir Look and Feel.Latest Release: 1.2, 12 May, 2009
Overview
The Napkin Look & Feel is a pluggableJava look and feel that looks like it was scrawled on a napkin. You can use itto make provisional work actually look provisional, or just for fun.It is released under a BSD-style licenseThe idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Javaapplications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional fordevelopment. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without fullfunctionality, they assume that the code behind it is working. While this can beused to sleazy advantage, it can also convince people who ought to know better(like your managers) that you are already done when you have just barely begun,or when only parts are complete. No matter how much you speak to their rationalside, the emotional response still says 'Done!'. Which after a while leads to alater question: 'That was done months ago! What are they doing? Playing Quake?'A good article on this is Joel onSoftware's “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed”.
So the idea is to create a complete look and feel that can be used while thething is not done which will convey an emotional message to match the rationalone. As pieces of the work are done, the GUI for those pieces can be switched touse the 'formal' (final) look and feel, allowing someone looking at demos overtime to see the progress of the entire system reflected in the expression of theGUI.
Over time, several folks have just liked the thing and wanted to use it fornon-provisional GUI's. Sometimes this is because the application itself seems tomatch the theme, such as a brainstorming tool. And sometimes it's just that itlooks fun.
This is all done using the Java Swing pluggable Look & Feel framework.
Snapshots
To give you a feel for what thislooks like, here are a few screen snapshots (as thumbnails; click for full-sizedimages):A file chooser dialog box with sketched icons | |||
Various buttons | Disabled things | A progress bar (scribbled in at the bottom) | A combo box (PostIt-style popup menu) |
Various sliders | A tree | Internal frames (blueprint theme) | File chooser (blueprint theme) |
A table (blueprint theme) | NetBeans on a Napkin (#1) | NetBeans on a Napkin (#2) | IntelliJ on a Napkin |
Development
Ken Arnold | We welcome anyone to contribute -- code, screenshots,thoughts, dreams, | Alex Lam S.L. |
Sightings
- Don't make the Demo look Done, from Kathy Sierra's blog Creating Passionate Users.
- 'Finally, it's great to know that there are tools to help make the look match the state, with my favorite being the Napkin Look and Feel, a GUI 'skin' for Java that makes the interface look -- quite literally -- like it was scrawled on a napkin.'
- Matt Stephens' “Agile Development with ICONIX Process”
- '... if the working prototype was presented looking like a user interface mockup that had been scrawled on theback of a napkin, then the customer would be more likely to see it for what it actually is: a slightly working but mostly non-functional prototype... Seems like a great idea to us!' (You can read the pages here)
- NetBeans Look & Feel Competition
- Claudio Miranda submitted an entry with NapkinLAF on GTK.
- Kirill Grouchnikov's blog
- Compares various LAFs for their Right-to-Left menu alignment issues. Thanks to Kirill for reporting the issues ;-)
- BlogEd
- 'I have added the napkin L&F to BlogEd and made it the default when run from cvs using 'ant run'. We can easily change it back if it gets in the way. The only bug I have noticed currently is that the pulling on the scrollbar seems to move the whole window. Perhaps Ken Arnold will know what the problem is there.'
- Daniel Steinberg's blog at java.net, April 5, 2004
- A very nice & quick writeup.
- Front page note on javadesktop.org , April 1 2004
- Just a brief note pointing to the home page, but we got some good mail from it.
Acknowledgments
Peter Goodspeed and Justin Crafford created the sketchingsubsystem, as a senior project for their degrees at Worcester PolytechnicInstitute. They did a great job, and solved an important problem. And thanks toScott Anderson, a fellow student and friend of mine who suggested theyget in touch with me to look for a thesis project.
Scott Violet of Sun has helped me pick apart some of the moreabstruse and arcane bits of the plaf framework, which is full of 'em. Thanks abunch, Scott, and thanks to Hans Muller, also of Sun, for plugging metogether with him.
Brandon Franklin has contributed many spare cycles (of which he hasnone) to planning the upgrade to 1.5, making the whole process mucheasier.
The font 'Felt Tip Roman' was created by Mark Simonson, who spent alot of time with me on how to license this. He has kindly decided that thisparticular use does not require individual licensing for each user of the LAF,but can be done by special arrangement. The legalities are below, but beyondthose legalities, we'd like to ask you all to be cool — if you like thefont and want to use it, buy it properly. Making fonts is not easy, and fontfolks get their work ripped off far too often. If you do want to use it, buy itfrom his site http://www.ms-studio.com/,where he gets more from it.
The font 'Ænigma Scrawl' was created by Brian Kent, and hasworked very well for a handwritten font that scales reasonably to GUI-controlsizes (most handwritten-style fonts are display fonts that only work in largesizes). To make things work better, Brian has adapted the font to adjust thespacing around some punctuation as well as some other tweaks. So the versionreleased here is a custom one direct from the artist (which we believe heexpects to roll back into the font at future date). We would like to thank Briana lot for his quick and nimble cooperation, which made this work a lot betterand easier on me.
Miro Jurišić has been very helpful in thinking through withme (sometimes for me) some of the hairy graphics problems. Thisdefinitely pushes into some poorly documented areas of the 2D API, and it hashelped a lot to have someone to talk it through with. Thanks, Miro!
Brian Hawthorne created a quick and excellent selection of blueprintbackgrounds for me to choose from. Thanks!
Several people have helped with testing, reporting bugs, and suggestingthings. The most persistent have been: Deryl Steinert, Bob Herrmann, David Matuszek, Graham Perks, Henry Story,and Tom Eugelink. Thanks to all, and we'll be happy to have yoube added to this list.