Substance Java look & feel

The goal of this project is to provide a configurable and customizable production-quality Java look and feel library for Swing applications. This Java look and feel is available for JDK 5.0+ only.

The main class is org.jvnet.substance.SubstanceLookAndFeel. In order to use Substance look and feel in your application, you can use one of the following:

• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceLookAndFeel());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.SubstanceLookAndFeel");
• Start your VM with -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.SubstanceLookAndFeel

In any case, add the latest substance.jar to your classpath. In addition you have the following two lite versions:

• substance-lite.jar that doesn't use custom color chooser panels (from Quaqua and Xoetrope - see below) and additional "feel" widgets from laf-widget. This light version is ~520KB less than the full version.
• substance-lite-feel.jar that doesn't use custom color chooser panels. This light version is ~270KB less than the full version.

Important announcements

Release for version 4.0 (code-named Key Largo) is scheduled for September 2007. Migration guide for applications is available here and you can track the development process at Pushing Pixels blog.

Skins

See skin documentation for information on how to set a skin, create a new skin and plugin a set of new skins in Substance.

Toned-down skins

See more...

Dark skins

See more...

Saturated skins

See more...

Using themes

See theme documentation for information on how to set default theme, create a new theme and plugin a set of new themes in Substance.

A few examples of various core themes - Olive and Barby Pink:

Using watermarks

See watermark documentation for information on how to set default watermark, create a new watermark and plugin a set of new watermarks in Substance.

A few examples of various core watermarks - Crosshatch and Mosaic:

Screenshots

Full screenshot gallery is available. In addition, application screenshot gallery shows how various third-party application look under Substance.

ColorChooserUI

The ColorChooserUI in Substance look and feel is taken from the excellent Quaqua look and feel (which is available for Macintosh only). The license for Quaqua is either LGPL or BSD. Kudos to Werner Randelshofer for excellent work and for willing to share his color chooser with this project. The current version is Quaqua 3.7.3.

In addition, the last color chooser panel was written by Luan O'Carroll from Xoetrope's XUI project and is licensed under MPL.

Popup windows

The popup windows in Substance look and feel have automatic support for drop shadows taken from the JGoodies Looks look and feel. The license for Looks is BSD. Kudos to all JGoodies developers lead by Karsten Lentzsch for excellent work. The current version is Looks 2.1.1, while Substance uses the code from version 1.3.2.

Additional resources

• Getting started.
• FAQ.
• API for applications.
• List of all supported client properties.
• List of all supported VM flags.
• Release info for version 2.0.
• Release info for version 2.1 (code-named Dakota).
• Release info for version 2.2 (code-named El Paso).
• Release info for version 2.3 (code-named Firenze).
• Release info for version 3.0 (code-named Grenada). Migration guide is available as well.
• Release info for version 3.1 (code-named Honolulu) - released on November 13, 2006.
• Release info for version 3.2 (code-named Iowa) - released on February 05, 2007.
• Release info for version 3.3 (code-named Japan) - released on April 16, 2007.
• Release history.

Demos

test application that shows all Substance features (signed - requires read-only access to the local disk for showing the filetree).

demo for the transition layout

Notes

In case you wish to use cross-platform frame and dialog decorations, use the following before you instantiate your first top-level window (but after you set the Substance look and feel to be your default): JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true); and JDialog.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);. This, however, causes flicker on resize due to a known bug. For Windows, there is a workaround, using System.setProperty("sun.awt.noerasebackground", "true");. You can set this property along with the above two lines. An additional option is to specify a substancelaf.useDecorations VM parameter.

In case you wish to build Substance from the sources, you will need to take the laf-plugin and laf-widget (binaries or sources). The best way is to take the CVS snapshot and use the build.xml script. The main test application uses the FormLayout and components from SwingLabs.

Thanks

• To Werner Randelshofer for letting use the Quaqua's ColorChooserUI.
• To Karsten Lentzsch for letting use the Looks drop shadows on popup windows and font policy layer.
• To Luan O'Carroll for providing Xoetrope XUI color chooser panel.
• To Thomas Bierhance for letting use the auto-completion on editable comboboxes (refactored to fit the listener model). This work has been previously released to public domain.
• To Pierre Le Lannic for contributing the initial version of the scroll pane selector.
• To Nigel Hughes for contributing code of JCarousel and JCarouselMenu to the tab overview dialog (contributed under ASL license in contrib.com.blogofbug package).
• To Timothy Wall for contributing the smooth list drag-and-drop widget (original code at https://abbot.sourceforge.net/demo/).
• To Chris Hall for reporting and fixing this defect.
• To inostock for providing additional fixes for this defect.
• To Nils-Morten Nilssen for reporting and fixing this defect.
• To Dag Joar for reporting and helping to fix this defect.
• To Larry Salibra for fixing this defect.
• To Erik Vickroy for working with me on the plugin mechanism.
• To Romain Guy for contributing image-processing functions (compatible images and thumbnails) and numerous advice on pixel-perfecting the toned-down skins.
• To Tim Boudreau for his fruitful collaboration on Substance NetBeans module. Also to Scott Violet for helping on support for Matisse baseline alignment.
• To Dr Heinz Max Kabutz for his implementation of soft reference cache.
• To Daniel Stonier and Keith Woodward for fixes in LAF swicthing code in the test application.
• To Sebastien Petrucci for providing the initial blurring code (no longer used).
• To Mark Haag for extensive testing and feedback of the theme mechanism and other components.
• To Magnus de Pourbaix for reporting bugs, requesting features and contributing internationalization of custom labels in 16 new languages.
• To Jorge Alberto Salazar Palomares and Raj Nagappan for requesting very useful features.
• To Martin Clifford for reporting memory leaks issues and working with me to resolve them.
• To Jon Lipsky for sharing the brushed metal texture for the watermark pack plugin.
• To Chris Campbell for sharing the soft-clipping technique used in some of the gradient painters.
• To Dean Iverson for testing Mac-related fixes.
• To Vladimir Maslikhin for reporting 20+ issues and testing the daily dev drops of versions 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2.
• To qu0ll for reporting issues on tables, trees and lists in version 3.2.
• To Carsten O. Madsen for requesting internationalization of custom labels.
• To the Tango project for providing high quality icons under the public domain license.
• To the Silk Icons for providing icons for default tree renderer under the public domain license.
• To all other reporters for pointing out the bugs and requesting new features. The (incomplete) list: Ismael Juma, Jackson G. West, Jens Hohl, Ana Oleski, Carsten O'Madsen, Frank Koopmans, Walter Van Der Heiden, Joerg Plewe, Stephan Bardubitzki, Tzuto Lin, Nick Holcombe, Adam Burrett, Peter Henderson, QamarAlZaman Habeek, John Mulcahy, Kirill Sorokin, Matthew F. Green, Dhilsukh Reddy Jeeru, Greg St. Onge, Josue Magana, Arne Gessner, Jurgen Jacobs, Aaron Bruegl, Jan Erik Paulsen, Vincent Trussart, Scott Shannon.
• To all the users for trying and using the Substance look-and-feel and its plugins.