New Swing L&F's -- Taking suggestions
Dean S Jones
All,
I am in the process of building some `alternative' look and
feel libraries for Swing. I have become more comfortable with the
( current ) internals, and I am open to suggestions. My current,
and first, L&F is somewhat BeOS like, mix in a little NextStep and
Rose kinda things. I am also working on making it configurable, as
in property sheets that modify colors and component defaults. So,
send me some of your thoughts on what would make a good L&F. I plan
to make them freely available for non-commercial use. If you have
trouble explaining what you want, attach a SMALL gif. I don't have
a T1 ya know... :-(
Dean S. Jones
de...@gallant.com
P.S.
Also, feel free to send me any thoughts on components that
are `missing' from Swing e.g. StatusBar's, Spinner's and the like.
Jamie Eisenhart
If you put what you have done so far on the net, I'd be glad to give it a try &
let you know what I think.
Jamie Eisenhart
UC San Diego
Thorsten Daum
Dean S Jones wrote:
> I am in the process of building some `alternative' look and
> feel libraries for Swing. I have become more comfortable with the
> ( current ) internals, and I am open to suggestions. My current,
> and first, L&F is somewhat BeOS like, mix in a little NextStep and
> Rose kinda things. I am also working on making it configurable, as
> in property sheets that modify colors and component defaults.
Great idea. If it's good, maybe JavaSoft will include it in their
distribution, they sure could use another non-platform specific L&F.
(For some reasson, some people don't seem to be too crazy about JLF ;-)
A few suggestions:
Decide whether you want to build a general purpose or a specialized
L&F, then stick with your decision. E.g., I like many of the approches
taken by JLF such as scroll bars and the original TabbedPane, but
unconventional solutions like these are not suited for _the_ general
purpose L&F. OTOH, I'd really like to see a very unconventional L&F
(Federation of Planets L&F anyone?) Let's face it, the Motif/Windows
paradigm is cumbersome and non-intuitive (we've just got used to it, but
ask any computer "novice"), so the sooner someone breaks out of it the
better.
Color schemes are highly desirable. Maybe you could use
c.s.j.s.jlf.JavaTheme to avoid reinventing the wheel. On any account I'd
suggest that JavaSoft moves JavaTheme to plaf or basic and has all L&F's
implement it.
Avoid the no no of hardcoding colors in the L&F like the gray table
background in BasicTableUI that you one couldn't get rid of.
Be imaginative but don't compromise functionality just for the sake of
being different. E.g., IMHO both JLFTreeUI and MotifTreeUI look broken.
There should be lines between all the nodes of a tree (or none at all)
and a [+/-] mechanism to expand and collaps trees is highly desirable.
Most of all, have fun!
Thorsten
David Edward Eison
Dean S Jones (de...@gallant.com) wrote:
: I am in the process of building some `alternative' look and
: feel libraries for Swing. I have become more comfortable with the
If you want it to be popular, go for a good Sci-Fi look and feel. Seems
silly, but I bet a whole bunch of apps would spring up using it.
-David Eison
CS 1502 Newsgroup / Program Development TA
Robert McDermid
In message <34B62D9F...@gallant.com> - Dean S Jones
<de...@gallant.com>Fri, 09 Jan 1998 09:01:03 -0500 writes:
>
>All,
>
> I am in the process of building some `alternative' look and
>feel libraries for Swing. I have become more comfortable with the
>and first, L&F is somewhat BeOS like, mix in a little NextStep and
>Rose kinda things. I am also working on making it configurable, as
>send me some of your thoughts on what would make a good L&F. I plan
>to make them freely available for non-commercial use. If you have
>trouble explaining what you want, attach a SMALL gif. I don't have
>a T1 ya know... :-(
>
I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
panels on The Next Generation. This has little practical value
though - those panels are clearly designed for touch access and
wouldn't work all that well for mouse access. Still, I bet there's
a lot of ST fanatics out there that would love to have the option.
-- Rob
Rob McDermid Hummingbird Communications Ltd.
All opinions expressed are my own.
SPAM CONTROL: Remove the dots from address before e-mailing
Peter van der Linden
> I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
> panels on The Next Generation.
Me too! Please build in the functionality to make the panels catch
fire and emit showers of sparks and smoke whenever the camera swings
wildly (to simulate a space crash).
I've often wondered why the Enterprise designers used such a
dangerously imflammable technology in their control panels. Death
wish for James T. Kirk?
Ryan Sutter
Peter van der Linden (unsp...@nospam.best.com) wrote:
: > I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
: > panels on The Next Generation.
:
: Me too! Please build in the functionality to make the panels catch
: fire and emit showers of sparks and smoke whenever the camera swings
: wildly (to simulate a space crash).
:
gui designs I can think of. Plug-In's for Adobe Photoshop, like Eye Candy
or Kai's Power Tools. They create some very interesting UI elements.
It's a pretty sure het that creative UI's will catch on...
Ryan
Charles Martin
Peter van der Linden wrote:
>
> > I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
> > panels on The Next Generation.
>
> Me too! Please build in the functionality to make the panels catch
> fire and emit showers of sparks and smoke whenever the camera swings
> wildly (to simulate a space crash).
>
> dangerously imflammable technology in their control panels. Death
> wish for James T. Kirk?
Hey, it was a great technological improvement over "Voyage to the Bottom
of the Sea" -- the computers on the Seaview shot roman candles every
time someone shook THAT camera.
David Anderson
> <snip>
Thorsten,
I liked your posting. All good comments. As for this one...
> Decide whether you want to build a general purpose or a specialized
> L&F, then stick with your decision. E.g., I like many of the approches
> taken by JLF such as scroll bars and the original TabbedPane, but
> unconventional solutions like these are not suited for _the_ general
> purpose L&F. OTOH, I'd really like to see a very unconventional L&F
> (Federation of Planets L&F anyone?) Let's face it, the Motif/Windows
> paradigm is cumbersome and non-intuitive (we've just got used to it, but
> ask any computer "novice"), so the sooner someone breaks out of it the
> better.
>
There are now alternative designs to Desktop. There is of course, Browser or
Forms metaphor e.g. Netscape, Lotus Notes etc.. But a newer idea is Webtop.
Webtop is aimed at transactional problems for specific users. A Webtop
design would normally go on an NC machine which is provided to a worker e.g.
Airline Check-in attendant, to do their specific job.
Check out the Sun website and search for the Hot Java Views Whitepaper, then
go and have a look at Lotus e-Suite over at www.lotus.com. Both of these are
examples of Webtop design. There is more to come from other vendors.
It is fair to say the JLF falls between the stools. It does not know if it
wants to be a UI for Desktop, Browsers or Webtops. I have pointed this out
to the Swingers at Sun already. There are elements in there which are
obviously designed for Forms based applications and belong in a Browser, but
there is still a lot of stuff hanging around which looks suspiciously like
Desktop design.
Your observartion that L&Fs need to be specialised is right on the money. I
think that JLF is a passing phase which demonstrates an ability. I believe
that Sun will have to split it into at least 3 L&Fs - one for each metaphor.
They published the source code with Swing 0.7 so I fully expect other L&Fs
to appear soon.
Regards,
David
Baron Saturday
Charles Martin <crma...@connix.com> scribbled in their own blood:
<snips>
>Hey, it was a great technological improvement over "Voyage to the Bottom
>of the Sea" -- the computers on the Seaview shot roman candles every
>time someone shook THAT camera.
Seaview had STABLE systems compared to the mainframes I saw in that
movie... ?? Something about a killer who killed people in their
dreams. At any rate, when they went out, at the end of the movie, an
entire city block was blown to smithereens.
Maybe their computers doubled as a service station?
William Wylde
Baron Saturday
pat robertson wants to kill us all, really.
http://wwww.geocities.com/Broadway/1680
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Reality is a point of view
+---- unsp...@nospam.best.com wrote (12 Jan 1998 13:08:45 -0800):
| > I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
| > panels on The Next Generation.
|
| Me too! Please build in the functionality to make the panels catch
| fire and emit showers of sparks and smoke whenever the camera swings
| wildly (to simulate a space crash).
What a great idea! How about an original Star Trek color
scheme with things like JTree's that begin to smoke when they
contain a lot of elements. Maybe triggering sound samples like
"I can't allocate no more captain, the VM is pushed to its
limits!" before calling gc() and saving the day. And "beaming
in" JDialogs. JTables that look like 3D chess boards . . .
--
Gary Johnson gjoh...@season.com
Privacy on the net is still illegal.
Robert McDermid
In message <69e0ot$bd2$1...@shell15.ba.best.com> - unsp...@nospam.best.com
(Peter van der Linden)12 Jan 1998 13:08:45 -0800 writes:
>Me too! Please build in the functionality to make the panels catch
>fire and emit showers of sparks and smoke whenever the camera swings
>wildly (to simulate a space crash).
>
>I've often wondered why the Enterprise designers used such a
>dangerously imflammable technology in their control panels. Death
>wish for James T. Kirk?
>
Probably because they use plasma for moving power around, instead
of wires. It can't be good when one of those springs a leak.
But let's not get too far off topic :-)
Dean S Jones
Reality is a point of view wrote:
>
> +---- unsp...@nospam.best.com wrote (12 Jan 1998 13:08:45 -0800):
> | > I'd love to see a "Star Trek" look and feel - like the control
> | > panels on The Next Generation.
> |
> scheme with things like JTree's that begin to smoke when they
> contain a lot of elements. Maybe triggering sound samples like
> "I can't allocate no more captain, the VM is pushed to its
> limits!" before calling gc() and saving the day. And "beaming
> in" JDialogs. JTables that look like 3D chess boards . . .
All kidding aside, I had started taking a crack at the Star-Trek
TNG/DS9/Voyager control panel look. Those sort of things are not
really that hard. I just need some good examples, but the Trek
web site doesn't seem to like Netscape. Bummer :-( People have
asked for this... It is sorta on the back-burner. I turn to if for
kicks here and there...
My first look and feel is an alternative Desktop L&F, not webtop,
if anyone can even put a definitive label on such a thing. I have
an immediate need for a cross-platform, neutral L&F. Not that far
away from the MS, Motif, OS/2 PM, Apple, & BeOS sorta CUA derived
widgets. Although the second generation JLF was more acceptable,
the bare-bones look was, well, a bit bare-bones for my liking.
Someone had mentioned the class of visually interesting interfaces
that come in PhotoShop plug-in's. Kai's stuff is very nifty, but
at first glance, I feel like I am playing Riven, trying to figure
how to operate this somewhat alien machinery... I do like these
interfaces, but they are not always intuitive. The major problem
I see is that Swing and contemporary GUI toolkits are Rectangular.
All components and containers are based on rectangles. Placing a
set of circular buttons around the perimeter of a circular view is
going to be mighty painful. At that point, I think it is a useless
exercise to shoe-horn these conflicting geometries together. It's
time to create some new components.
I will post a version of my first L&F in a few weeks. It's not
going to be a radical departure from the norm. I gotta work on
this in my spare time. I have a day job...
Dean Jones
de...@gallant.com
Robert Nicholson
Yes the rectangular is certainly a fair criticism. If you guys are intersted
in seeing L&F's you should take inspiration from Enlightenment the X-Windows
window manager
Dean S Jones
Are you talking about the software knows as `The X Windowing System',
or the Window Managers proper??? In the context of non-rectangular
windows, the X11 shape extension was kinda nifty!!! It would be nice
to be able to supply a `bit mask' as the `shape mask' of a top level
window in Java, though in an applet I wonder where you would put the
WARNING APPLET WINDOW message??? :-(
The window managers themselvs were hairy monsters... Semi-standards
and half baked focus models always kept me away from hacking. FVWM
was a beauty tho. plug-in's, customization, free. A spiffy piece of
work if I ever saw one. MWM/CDE sucks up resources like nobdy can.
What a hog...
Dean
Mike Anderson
I think the Riven/Alien looking stuff
might sell some things in certain
markets, but I wouldn't want to use it.
What I'd like to see is a an improvement
over the current (but not much different
from that of 20 years ago) WIMP model.
I'm surprised things have settled around
this unergonomic collection of gadgets.
I'll just mention my two biggest gripes
with the current WIMP GUIs (these two
are the main culprits, IMO - there are
lots of other things on my list of
what's "wrong" with current GUIs, but
these two are much more significant than
any of the others):
1) moving right hand from mouse, to
keyboard, to mouse, to keyboard...ad
infinitum. This is the worst kind of
modality, the physical kind - I figure
I've got about two years left and then
my right wrist and arm become useless
(who would be the target of a class
action law suit? Microsoft? They got it
from Apple. Apple? They got it from
Xerox PARC. Xerox PARC? It was just a
research project, they didn't sell it or
promote it...).
2) overlapping windows - waste much of
space and are a poor or organization
model. I recently realized that I spend
a lot of time arranging my windows a
certain way. Then I realized that this
was yet another thing the computer could
and should do for me. This line of
thought led me to believe that
overlapping windows are a very flawed
model of interaction.
Both of these problems can be removed or
lessened by a new GUI model. There are
limitless possibilities, but what
coagulating in my mind is something
that's not too far removed from current
WIMP GUI technology. Some highlights:
* There is a mouse, but it's not needed
to navigate the shell, nor is it needed
to for text based applications. It will
still be very useful (necessary) for
certain kinds of apps: painting,
diagramming, GUI design, etc. The modes
will still exist, but there will be far
less switching. If you are a user of
mouse powered apps you can spend most of
the day with the hand on the mouse. If
you are a user of mostly keyboard
powered apps you can spend the day on
home row. Both keyboard and mouse would
be usable for shell navigation (truly
usable, not just theoretically usable,
as the keyboard is now).
* Instead of overlapping windows, there
are screens divided into arrays and
matrices of sub screens. Because things
are arranged in arrays and matrices, the
path for getting from one sub screen to
another via arrow keys is usually
completely obvious. You can arrow key
(or mouse) to another sub screen and
'enter' it (zoom it with a special
keystroke) so that it fill most or all
of the containing screen, possibly
revealing another collection of
organized sub screens. There would be a
way to arrange any collection of sub
screens in a vertical or horizontal
array or in a matrix to support things
that need a side by side layout of two
different things, in fact I expect
arranging things side by side like this
will be easier in this GUI than it would
be in a free-form overlapping windows
GUI.
These above tmething they didn't
understand. I think there's limited
value in a copy of a mangled copy of a
copy of a 30 year old conceptual model.
But I could be wrong.
hings are just ideas, sketches (on
paper), and minimal infrastructure
coding, at this point. I won't know if
this really makes sense until have a
prototype up.
They say the proof is in the pudding,
and I haven't pudded yet, but I thought
I'd throw this out there and see if
anything sticks to it. I don't want to
promote any violence, but in the war
against Microsoft it's hopeless to
battle them on their own turf. The
current WIMP GUI is their turf - not
that their great at that or anything,
but they are entrenched. Out maneuver
MS by establishing The GUI for The Next
Millennium (echo, echo, echo...).
The current WIMP GUI is an experiment
that had to be done, but the results are
negative. It's a model that's 20 or 30
years old, and the Windows version of it
was mangled by designers that tried to
copy so
...Mike