Look and Feel

Java is able to change the look and feel of an application to provide a platform independent graphical user interface. The NumericalChameleon acts really as a chameleon in this case. It provides all standard Look&Feels, Metal-Themes, the Kunststoff-, the Metouia-, the NimROD, the Plastic- and the Squareness Look&Feel.
 

Standards

The standard Look&Feels are selectable by most computers.


Alternatives

Kunststoff

The Kunststoff-Look&Feel is a Look&Feel from http://www.incors.org/archive. The filename is "kunststoff.jar" and it is stored in the subdirectory "installationdirectory/lib". The Kunststoff-Look&Feel is inherited by the Metal-Look&Feels. Therefore themes are also supported.Note, that the Incors company doesn't maintain the Kunststoff LnF anymore.

Metal

The Metal Look&Feel is the Standard Steel-Look&Feel plus Metal-Themes enabled.

Metal-Themes

Metal-Themes are based on the platform independent "Metal" Look&Feel. You have the control about color and font. The filename of a  theme have to end with ".theme". They should be stored in "installationdirectory/data/themes/", otherwise the NumericalChameleon will not find them. The following entries are supported by the NumericalChameleon:
Key Format Description/Example
name String Name of the theme
primary1 red,green,blue-values (decimal) 87,87,47
primary2 -"- 159,151,111
primary3 -"- 199,183,143
secondary1 -"- 111,111,111
secondary2 -"- 159,159,159
secondary3 -"- 231,215,183
black -"- Definition von Schwarz
white -"- Definition von Weiß
ControlTextFont fontname,style,size Dialog,bold,12
SystemTextFont -"- Dialog,bold,12
UserTextFont -"- Dialog,bold,12
MenuTextFont -"- Dialog,bold,12
WindowTitleFont -"- Dialog,bold,12
SubTextFont -"- Dialog,plain,10

Please have a look at the themes "Steel.theme", it's the default Metal Look&Feel, "Presentation.theme" for presentations and "Contrast.theme" for two color driven laptops.  


Metouia

The Metouia-Look&Feel is a free Look&Feel, themes are also supported. In the past it was available at http://mlf.sourceforge.net.

NimROD

The NimROD-Look&Feel is a frei available Look&Feel. Download it from http://personales.ya.com/nimrod/index-en.html
Themes are supported.

Plastic

The Plastic-Look&Feel is a free Look&Feel. Download it from http://www.jgoodies.com

Squareness

The Squareness-Look&Feel is a free Look&Feel. Download it from http://squareness.sourceforge.net
Themes for the Squareness-Look&Feel can be created with the Colorizer (it is a tool of the Squareness project). Just create a file called "themepack.slftp" with the Colorizer and copy it to the subdirectory called "installationdirectory/data/themes/java". Delete the file to get the default for Squareness.

More Alternatives

SkinIt

SkinIt is part of the Skin Look and Feel (as known as SkinLF). Skin Look And Feel allows you to make any Java application skinable. Skin Look And Feel is able to read GTK (The Gimp ToolKit) and KDE (The K Desktop Environment) Skins. You can download SkinLF from http://www.L2FProd.com/software/skinlf.
L2FProd provides also themes for MacOS X (Aqua) and Windows XP. If you're using SkinIt you'll not be able to use NumericalChameleon's Look and Feels anymore.