Lesson: Modifying the Look and Feel

This lesson tells you how to change the look and feel of your Swing application. The "look" of an application refers to its appearance. The "feel" refers to how the widgets behave. You can choose to use the default Swing look and feel (e.g. the Ocean theme for the Metal look and feel), or the look and feel of the native platform (e.g. Windows, GTK+), or you can customize your own look and feel.

How to Set the Look and Feel

Basic information on setting the look and feel to one of the available look and feels. Information on setting the look and feel programmatically, and at the command line, is provided.

The Synth Look and Feel

Information on how to customize your look and feel using the Synth package is provided.

The Nimbus Look and Feel

Information on how to customize your look and feel using the Nimbus package, introduced in the JDK 7 release, is provided.

If you are interested in using JavaFX to create your GUI, see Skinning JavaFX Applications with CSS and Using JavaFX Charts.