Friday, September 8, 2006

JDK 6.0 Fonts and Quaqua Look and Feel

I recently came across this excellent look and feel library. This is called "quaqua" and it is designed for swing applications on OS X. Well, since this is java, you could use the look and feel on M$ Windows or any other java platform as well - but ofcourse, you can't complain if it breaks on your OS because, it was originally designed for OS X. Also, there are legal reasons why you should not use it on your platform(this is what I heard from its author).
However, I patched up the jEdit look and feel plugin to draw my jEdit using Qaqua look and feel. Actually, I did that for quite a few java swing apps that I use frequently. Yes! you heard it right, I use swing applications on my desktop. Here are the screenshots how it looks on my win XP workstation.
Oh! coming to JDK 6.0 (otherwise called the 'mustang'), it has some major face lifts for swing. One thing that will catch your eyes is Sub pixel smoothing or anti-aliasing that it supports. Way to go!

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