Kirill Grouchnikov's Blog

Listening to the users

Thanks to everybody for commenting on my previous entry. Apparently, Romain is not the only one aghast with the default Substance settings. I'm listening and i'm learning - thanks everybody for the feedback. The main complaints seem to be:

• Loud color schemes
• Inconsistent gradients
• Sensible settings not coming out-of-the-box

Here are four new skins to start in the direction of Looks / Xerto / Pagosoft / Alloy bunch. They use toned-down color schemes, subdued gradient painter, flat title painter and solid borders. Hope you like it better and waiting to hear your thoughts.

The first skin is Sahara and can be set:

• SubstanceLookAndFeel.setSkin(new SaharaSkin());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceSaharaLookAndFeel());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceSaharaLookAndFeel");
• -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceSaharaLookAndFeel

The second skin is Moderate and can be set:

• SubstanceLookAndFeel.setSkin(new ModerateSkin());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceModerateLookAndFeel());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceModerateLookAndFeel");
• -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceModerateLookAndFeel

The third skin is Business and can be set:

• SubstanceLookAndFeel.setSkin(new BusinessSkin());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceBusinessLookAndFeel());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceBusinessLookAndFeel");
• -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceBusinessLookAndFeel

The fourth skin is Creme and can be set:

• SubstanceLookAndFeel.setSkin(new CremeSkin());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceCremeLookAndFeel());
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceCremeLookAndFeel");
• -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceCremeLookAndFeel

Update: the screenshots have been updated following a very detailed feedback from Romain. This work is not finished.

Comments

• I like Business and maybe Cream. :)

  Posted by: herkules on September 26, 2006 at 02:07 AM

• Like many others, I've been technically impressed by the work you've been doing related to Substance, but have not tried using it simply because of the garish out-of-the-box colour schemes, and not having time to tweak them. And of course because I'd need consistent UI delegates for Jide :-)
  The Alloy look-and-feel is very impressive but there doesn't seem to have been any updates for a long time (despite recent additions to their icons), so I'd probably opt more for substance now that I don't need to deploy sunglasses to end-users.
  I guess here I fall into to the category of users not giving feedback at all ; those that provide negative feedback and those that don't reply at all may reject a product for entirely different reasons.
  - Chris

  Posted by: chris_e_brown on September 26, 2006 at 04:22 AM

• Pick up a book on color composition and design, or at the very least, pick up a few paint combination swatches from one of the paint companies' online color pickers. They've market tested dozens of color combinations to be palatable to a wide audience, and those choices are likely to be much more widely accepted than what you personally think looks good. Save those choices for your personal artwork.

  The saturation levels of all but the last example here seem to be a bit heavy.

  Posted by: twalljava on September 26, 2006 at 06:24 AM

• I think moderate, business and sahara are quite good. Creame are a bit... well, creamy to my taste.

  By the way, i like most of the existing themes, even though i gues some of them are pretty extreme for most people.

  Having read the comments to the latest of your blogs, i wonder howcome people have had so much to say about the look & feel, but not much of it has appered on the substance forum.
  But then again, i gues that most of the people letting out a voice now, are people who have not had the need to use Substance, and therefore did not have the motivation to go to the forum and express their concerns about the L&F.

  Posted by: akobberup on September 26, 2006 at 06:51 AM

• akobberup: It happens with most software products. You don't use what you don't like (unless forced to), therefore you do not participate to this product and do not spend time on forums or mailing lists. Do you go to the forum of every piece of software you have tried and did not like? I doubt you do :)

  Posted by: gfx on September 26, 2006 at 06:57 AM

• gfx; I know. And i don't :)
  That were also my conclusion on my post.
  I dident write it as a critisism, but i think it's great that attention has come to the subject now.
  The more you know about (potential) users reactions to your software, the better you can make it, and (hopefully) the broader it will be used...

  Posted by: akobberup on September 26, 2006 at 07:29 AM

• those look nice. How hard is it for a user to make a Substance theme?

  leouser

  Posted by: leouser on September 26, 2006 at 08:14 AM

• leouser,
  This is the sample code for Moderate:

  SubstanceTheme activeTheme = new SubstanceSteelBlueTheme();
  SubstanceTheme defaultTheme = activeTheme.getDefaultTheme();
  SubstanceTheme disabledTheme = activeTheme.getDisabledTheme();
  SubstanceTheme activeTitleTheme = activeTheme;

  this.theme = new SubstanceComplexTheme("Moderate", ThemeKind.COLD,
  activeTheme, defaultTheme, disabledTheme, activeTitleTheme);
  ((SubstanceComplexTheme) this.theme)
  .setCellRendererBackgroundTheme(new SubstanceBlendBiTheme(
  new SubstanceTerracottaTheme(),
  new SubstanceSunGlareTheme(), 0.5));
  theme.addPaintAsActive(JScrollBar.class);
  this.shaper = new ClassicButtonShaper();
  this.watermark = new SubstanceNullWatermark();
  this.gradientPainter = new ClassicGradientPainter();
  this.titlePainter = new ClassicTitlePainter();

  For this, i had to add support for cell renderer background theme, a new gradient painter (which overrides four color-computing methods from an existing painter) and a new title painter that has the same logic as the new gradient painter. So, it's not a lot of work, but i guess i wrongly expected the users (developers) to do this job instead of myself.

  Posted by: kirillcool on September 26, 2006 at 09:01 AM

• hmm, that doesn't look too terrible. I guess the hard part would be able to figure out what these things do, and from looking at the code Im dubious that it would be bad. I suppose it could be made simpler(and maybe a little funner) if there was tool by which you could compose Substance themes.

  leouser

  Posted by: leouser on September 26, 2006 at 09:16 AM

• leouser,
  Writing such a tool is not a trivial task, especially given the rich theming API. You can potentially have a very long chain of theme creation, like mixing / shading / blending / hue-shifting and what not. I just don't have time to write it.

  Posted by: kirillcool on September 26, 2006 at 09:25 AM

• Now you're getting somewhere Kirill, good work.
  I'd say I prefer Creme, the others are too dark for my flavour.

  Posted by: diod on September 26, 2006 at 10:18 AM

• Kirill,

  I think it's great that you're doing this based on feedback, and I have to confess that I feel bad critizing the look of Substance when so much work has gone into it.

  I think the flexibility it provides it's great, and the fact that the themes are not that hard to configure via code is always a good thing to have.

  I hadn't noticed the "lock" icon, is that for read only text fields? Kinda neat!

  Posted by: augusto on September 26, 2006 at 02:34 PM

• Much, much, better. It's hard to say anything definitive without seeing these themes "in action", but Moderate looks good, and Creme looks excellent. I think "busyness" is a important issue for Substance. Whenever I've tried Substance I've often felt there was just too much going on, every component was trying a little too hard to stand out with gradients, watermarks, bright colours, etc.

  The reason Creme looks so nice is more than just brightness or colour balance, it's that the components don't seem to be fighting for your attention, and they don't overly contrast with the rest of their UI neighborhood.

  Posted by: amtiskaw on September 27, 2006 at 05:59 AM

• I love the existing Substance themes, there's no other L&F that can make high-contrast themes look so good. And screaming/loud/hideous is good for UI's in games.

  But for business apps I think Creme is perfect - I agree with amtiskaw. The other themes are a bit dark, though its nice that Moderate is very similar to the MS Office 2003 L&F. Great work.

  Are you going to set Creme or one of the others as default in preference to Aqua?

  Posted by: commanderkeith on September 27, 2006 at 10:32 PM

• These four are available as either skins or as separate main LAF classes - see the ways to set them. Aqua continues to be the default theme if SubstanceLookAndFeel is used as the main LAF class.

  Posted by: kirillcool on September 27, 2006 at 11:10 PM

• On the business of Substance: I agree that it is busy (that lock...yikes!) but perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse: perhaps a window using Substance needs to be specially designed to look best.

  For example, perhaps Substance is one of the LAFs that looks best when there are large margins (e.g. around tabs) and larger dialog boxes.

  Posted by: jelliffe_rick on September 29, 2006 at 11:29 AM

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