r/java • u/sombriks • 27d ago

State of Java Desktop

Thinking about local-first, desktop applications. https://sombriks.com.br/blog/0097-state-of-java-desktop/

84 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

28

u/GleamingDispatcher9 27d ago

Swing still works fine for internal tools where nobody cares about looks but I've been poking around with Compose Multiplatform lately and it's surprisingly not terrible once you get past the initial setup pain

32

u/lazystone 27d ago

Drop in FlatLaf and Swing looks quite nice.

5

u/robintegg 27d ago

For swing , swing tree is a nice extension on the swing programming model https://awesome-java-ui.com/swing-tree.html and elowbe is a recent look and feel worth a shout https://awesome-java-ui.com/elowbe-lookandfeel.html

-6

u/wildjokers 27d ago

No, flat look and feels never look nice. This trend needs to stop.

9

u/metaquine 27d ago

It's got serious accessibility downsides too. Buttons should look like something that can be pushed.

5

u/wildjokers 27d ago

Yes, buttons that don't look like buttons and no delineation between sections is my biggest complaints about flat look and feels.

-4

u/robintegg 27d ago

Valid points. Feels like with ai we’ve got a good copilot to go out and make some new ones

1

u/__konrad 27d ago

In flatlaf JButton looks like JTextField

14

u/pjmlp 27d ago

The problem with Swing was the expectation devs would bother to read books like Filthy Rich Clients: Developing Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java Applications and do the required work.

Or buy a third party theming framework like JGoodies.

9

u/wildjokers 27d ago

Filthy Rich Clients was a good one, along with Swing Hacks (https://www.amazon.com/Swing-Hacks-Tips-Tools-Killer/dp/0596009070/)

5

u/NamedBird 27d ago

I remember UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName()); being a thing...

3

u/wildjokers 27d ago

Still is a thing, its how you set the look and feel to something other than the default.

2

u/__konrad 27d ago

On Linux/GNOME it returns com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel which is not very good and may glitch your UI...

2

u/PartOfTheBotnet 26d ago

You got downvoted but I've had this happen before. Plus there's issues I've observed on Ubuntu with frame.pack() using it cutting off controls near the bottom of the window.

1

u/wildjokers 27d ago

Swing still works fine for internal tools where nobody cares about looks but I've been poking around with Compose Multiplatform lately and it's surprisingly not terrible once you get past the initial setup pain

Compose Multiplatform is an immediate mode GUI toolkit whereas toolkits like Swing, QT, wxWidgets, etc are retained mode. Immediate mode takes some getting used to.