I'm tired of JButtons, how can I make a nicer GUI in java?

Question

So far I\'ve only built \"small\" graphical applications, using swing and JComponents as I learned at school. Yet I can\'t bear ugly JButtons anymore. I\'ve tried to play wi

Answer 1

try
{
     UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
} catch(Exception e)
{}

Answer 2

You may want to try JavaFX. For all its problems, I find that if you want to put a decent (preetier than Swing) interface over your Java application, its quite easy to do. Plus good Java integration. You can implement Java interfaces in JavaFX and vice versa.

Answer 3

If you are a little bit into graphics design, you might want to consider creating your own design with Synth, which is part of the standard JRE. If you don't want to create your own, google for free existing themes which you may use.

Alternatives to Synth are either Synthetica (free for personal, non commercial use) or Substance ("free" as in "BSD License").

Answer 4

Our project manager doesn't like JButtons as well and we're using JIDE OSS buttons instead(and lot's of other JIDE components). SwingX also offers an alternative - JXButton. IMO these are the two most valuable external Swing libraries around.

Answer 5

It would be nice if Java had a similar tool to Interface Builder (the GUI development tool that comes with Xcode) - by far the best UI builder I've ever seen.

Answer 6

This article shows how to extend JButton and overide the methods for painting the component.