Comments on: Breakdown of what should be default LAF for Java 7

By: Till

Till — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:27:15 +0000

To be honest Nimbus looks like a nice try by someone who is not really into (ui)design. Parts of it, especially the scrollbars dont work. They kinda visually bend to one side and stick out. And the overall choice of colors is a grey swamp with some blue and green mixed in. How cold can it get? I mean, grey on its on with some colorfull touches is ok, but dont mix the grey. Then the icons, dont get me started on them. And the progressbar, and and and…

I dont want to be harsh, but to replace the native look and feel you have to come up with something superior, with something superior to vista/7/gtk and thats not it. When i looked after some long time at Netbeans 6.7 with its mac-alike LF i was pleasently suprised. The first time i saw a java-ui and liked it, despite its still beeing different from the native look, but close. But i dont think the point is being close or the same on all platforms is most important, but being pretty. Most users, and im not speaking about the people who voted here, because they are most probably all devs, really like things to be pretty. A Application has to give them a warm feeling, despite beeing usable and all that. So if you are not aiming for devs, most of them aint got a sense for aesthetics anyway(yeah, fuck me, i know), give it another try and ask some designers about it.

This theme is just like my english – it kinda works. But if i understood you correctly, this most importantly provides the groundwork to develop new themes easly. Then please hire some decent designer and let him do his work.

By: Ande

Ande — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:40:30 +0000

Oh and … Java is sold on the premise it is multi platform …

Creating software that looks good using Nimbus once makes my life as a developer. It is far simpler than tweaking the UI to each set of platform dependant idiosyncrases.

By: Ande

Ande — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:30:08 +0000

If I were to design a Suite of Applications written in Java, I would choose the Nimbus L&F … I always endeavour that my software is substantially better than exist instances of software. I’d utilise Nimbus’ distinctiveness to add distinction to my own software.

You should aim to make the Nimbus L&F become synonymous with good software irrespective of the underlying platform.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:03:16 +0000

The Nimbus look and feel looks very nice, but the *default* look and feel on any platform should be the native look and feel of that platform or desktop environment: the Windows LAF on Windows, GTK on GNOME, Qt on KDE, Aqua (or whatever the system LAF is) on Mac OS X.

Ofcourse Nimbus should be available, but not as the default.

Most users want applications that look native, and not applications that look totally different than most other applications they have on their system – regardless of how pretty the look is.

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 07 May 2009 06:20:52 +0000

I have come a full circle on Nimbus and in the end I can say that it is an extremely outdated look and feel. If Nimbus is the default for JDK7, then I better consider other GUI alternatives, not Java.

By: Rob Bygrave

Rob Bygrave — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:00:45 +0000

I voted for Native L&F but I potentially want to change my mind. Specifically, I want to clarify that Nimbus is pretty easy to skin (colour/themes as well as painters) … and due to being Vector based… I’d expect you’d be able to increase/decrease the size of the fonts and controls … and it will still look great.

That is, if its easy to skin … and easy to support scalable UI’s then its the L&F I’d want to use.

Is there a demo app showing off the vector rendering… dynamically scaling the fonts/controls via +/- button or similar?
Is there a demo app that shows toggling between colour/themes?

Thanks, Rob.

By: Sultan

Sultan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:00:09 +0000

I personally vote for creation of QT (KDE) LAF. I’m exclusively using KDE. I’ll other platforms and WMs — I don’t care. In absence of such I’ll use Nimbus or Metal but hardly ever GTK.

By: McDowell

McDowell — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:00:51 +0000

I’m in favour of keeping the default as is for backwards compatibility reasons. Otherwise, a JRE upgrade could potentially turn an existing, deployed app into a usability mess if the developers haven’t been mindful of Look’n'Feels.

I’m all for newer, better UIs, but prefer them to be an option.

By: walter

walter — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:14:23 +0000

why should we accept the Window L&F as the default or best UI available? Windows was created about 20 years ago. Why take an old-timer instead of a new innovative and more productive UI or LAF?

By: Miguel Muñoz

Miguel Muñoz — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:22:11 +0000

I love the look of Nimbus, but I’m reluctant to vote for it until I’m confident the bugs will get fixed. My biggest gripe is the way all of my JTable cell renderers clash visually with Nimbus. And I don’t want to write a whole new set of Renderers just for Nimbus, which I’m not sure is even possible, given the strange way Nimbus draws tables. (Right now I use a workaround that changes the look of JTables, so they’ll work with the same renderers that work fine in other L&Fs.) But when I look at the Nimbus bugs in the Bug Database, many of them have low priority and haven’t even been evaluated yet, which doesn’t boost my confidence. On the plus side, Nimbus finally gives us a cross platform L&F that looks so good it makes me want to abandon the platform L&F.