Puneet Varma (Editor)

Synth Look and Feel

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synth is a skinnable Java look and feel, which is configured with an XML property file.

Contents

According to Sun, goals for synth were:

  • Enable to create custom look without writing any code.
  • Allow appearance to be configured from images.
  • Provide the ability to customize the look of a component based on its named properties.
  • Provide a centralized point for overriding the look of all components.
  • Enable custom rendering based on images, or user-defined SynthPainters.

    • History

    synth is available beginning with version J2SE 5.0 of Java (see Java version history).

    Java SE 6 Update 10 release and newer contain Nimbus, a cross-platform Look and Feel implemented with Synth. However, for backwards compatibility, Metal is still the default Swing look and feel.

    Architecture

    Synth is a skinnable look and feel in which all painting is delegated to the components, without having to write any code (see Synth Look and Feel).

    However synth does not provide a default look, and components that are not defined in the synth XML file will not be painted. It is however possible to assign a default style to all other widgets, and customize styles for some specific widgets only.

    Example

    The following XML declaration defines a style named textfield and binds it to all text fields. The defaultStyle allows to set a default font, foreground and background colors to all other widgets.

    Supposing that the XML declaration is defined in a file named synthExample.xml, the following code loads the XML definition file and sets the current look and feel to synth (loading a synth Look and Feel is done using the load method of the SynthLookAndFeel class):

    References

    Synth Look and Feel Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA