Its always nice to see new Swing Look and Feels. Nice looking new theme for Synthetica. Link: Synthetica BlackEye Highlights
Synthetica is based on same Synth Look and Feel that Nimbus is. There are some very neat features which we are supporting in JavaFX like shaped windows and smart backgrounds. Its really nice to seem them available to Swing developers.
A new Swing GUI builder tool is out in beta called GUIDE. Looking at the videos on the website it looks impressive. Like a more polished version of Netbeans Matisse with some extra goodies.
It seemed like it was time to close the polls, I don’t think there is a clear answer across all platforms. On windows there is a clear winner for the native look and that makes sense as Windows LAF has had a huge amount of work put into it over that last 5 years plus. If there was the resources to put a equal effort into the GTK LAF and a new KDE LAF then they would be clear winners to. Nimbus is a great cross platform look and feel and allows people to create good looking applications but maybe is not the simplest look and feel for people to start with as it takes a little effort to make a great looking application with it. Also it is not the best for compatibility with applications written to work with other look and feels so is a dangerous choice as a default. So I kind of feel that we could go native on Windows and people will be happy but there is no clear answer for GTK and KDE. I will pass the poll results on to the other people who have a say in the decision and see what the consensus is.
After watching the voting and reading the comments I have noticed two things: First is from 30 votes to 800 votes the percentages have hardly changed which means we seem to be falling on a conclusion. Native LAF has varied from 59% to 63% so nothing major and is a clear winner.
The second point is there seems to be different answers for Windows and Unix and good arguments that maybe they should not be the same so let me start a new poll with them split and see if I am right. I will split the poll into 3 categories Windows, Unix GTK and Unix KDE. I am not quite sure how we detect between GTK and KDE but sure we can find a way 
What should be default LAF for Windows?
Total Voters: 909
Loading ...What should be default LAF for GTK(Unix)?
Total Voters: 802
Loading ...What should be default LAF for KDE(Unix)?
Total Voters: 778
Loading ...Again If you have a strong feeling one way or another then please explain in a comment below as we would love to hear. All your votes and comments will be taken into consideration when we make the final discussion.
The other day I was discussing with colleagues if Nimbus should be the default LAF(Look and Feel) for Swing application. The current default LAF is Ocean which is a spiced up theme for Metal which has been the Swing default LAF since the beginning. It feels like with a large release like Java 7 it is about time we changed the default LAF to a more sensible choice which leaves two choices Nimbus which is the new cross platform LAF and the system native LAF which will be Windows LAF on Windows and GTK LAF on Unix. Apple has already gone with the system native choice and the default LAF for Java Swing applications on Mac is Apple’s Aqua native LAF. The only reason for remaining with Ocean LAF is to maintain backwards compatibility for old Java applications which were written with static pixel based layout so will be all messed up if the size of components changes. My feeling is that sector of users should be getting pretty small now and as long as we provide a easy work around like system property file that lets a user/administrator change the default LAF back to Ocean for those few special cases then we can move forward and select a modern LAF as the default. So then it comes down to what to choose Nimbus or Native(Windows/GTK) I am torn between the two. So we decided the best idea is to ask more people, so what do you think?
What Swing Look and Feel should be the default in Java 7?
Total Voters: 829
Loading ...If you have a strong feeling one way or another then please explain in a comment below as we would love to hear. All your votes and comments will be taken into consideration when we make the final discussion.
Update
I have closed this poll and opened 3 new ones on the post Breakdown of what should be default LAF for Java 7. So follow that link if you would like to vote.