Here are a few pointers on making Java Swing UI look pretty on Mac like a native Cocoa application, AKA the Aqua user interface.
* Discuss on J Wiki http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/System/Portable%20Front%20End/Requests#AquaUI Java Development Guide for Mac OS X http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Java/Conceptual/Java14Development/01-JavaOverview/JavaOverview.html Technical Note TN2196 New Control Styles available within J2SE 5.0 on Mac OS X 10.5 http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2007/tn2196.html Compare the styling suggested above with the J Controls demo. A few notes: * typical controls (buttons, text boxes) are not arbitrarily size by height, instead they are bucketed in discrete sizes (small, medium, large). Otherwise, they will appear distorted. * small style hits can dramatically improve some control appearance. E.g. toolbar buttons can be styled as "segmented" where adjacent buttons between gaps can be combined. * window features can be used to show document icon and the "dirty" flag in the title bar * other creative uses are available, such as additional buttons styling (help buttons or various shapes), text boxes (search bevel) etc. Most of the styling is set via uniform call to contol.putClientProperty() with text arguments; so it can be made available through wd interface. Whereas common-sense settings could be pre-applied by wd internally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
