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Java Swing, 2nd Edition
book

Java Swing, 2nd Edition

by Dave Wood, Robert Eckstein, Marc Loy, James Elliott, Brian Cole
November 2002
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
1278 pages
38h 26m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Java Swing, 2nd Edition

Creation of a Custom Look-and-Feel

Everything we’ve covered in this chapter up to this point has been useful background information for the ultimate application customization strategy: creating your own L&F. As you might guess, this is not something you’ll do in an afternoon, nor is it usually something you should consider doing at all. However, thanks to the L&F framework, it’s not as difficult as you might think. In a few instances, it actually makes sense, such as when you’re developing a game. You’ll likely find that the most difficult part is coming up with a graphical design for each component.

There are basically three different strategies for creating a new L&F:

  • Start from scratch by extending LookAndFeel and extending each of the UI delegates defined in javax.swing.plaf.

  • Extend the BasicLookAndFeel and each of the abstract UI delegates defined in javax.swing.plaf.basic.

  • Extend an existing L&F, like MetalLookAndFeel, and change only selected components.

The first option gives you complete control over how everything works. It also requires a lot of effort. Unless you are implementing an L&F that is fundamentally different from the traditional desktop L&Fs, or you have some strong desire to implement your own L&F framework from scratch, we strongly recommend that you do not use this approach.

The next option is the most logical if you want to create a completely new L&F. This is the approach we’ll focus on in this section. The BasicLookAndFeel has been designed as an abstract framework ...

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ISBN: 0596004087Errata PageSupplemental Content