A few days ago I wrote a java demo application for a client. One of his primary requirements was better interface. So I thought I would change the theme of the application. After some googling I found that java supports LookAndFeel for basic interface customization. But the example in sun’s site looked gibberish to me. So after some more googling I came up with a solution.Here is what to do.

We have to call javax.swing.UIManager.getInstalledLookAndFeels() to get an array of installed lookandfeel. Then we set our desired LookAndFeel by calling javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(LookAndFeel_ClassName). Then we have to update all our components by calling javax.swing.SwingUtilities.updateComponentTreeUI(this). Then we have to wrap this in a try-catch block. Thats all.

Here is the key portion of the code

    private void selectLookAndFeel(int num)
    {
        try
        {
            javax.swing.UIManager.LookAndFeelInfo[] installedLF =
javax.swing.UIManager.getInstalledLookAndFeels();
            javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(installedLF[num].getClassName());
            javax.swing.SwingUtilities.updateComponentTreeUI(this);
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            javax.swing.JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(rootPane, e.getMessage(),
 "Error", javax.swing.JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
        }
    }

Here is some screenshots:

Metal:

Motif:

Windows:

Windows Classic:

Here is the Netbeans project file. Its created on Netbeans 6.0 and Java 6.0 . But I am sure it will work with Java 5.

themedapp.zip

Filed under: Java, GUI, Java