Kirill Grouchnikov's Blog

Substance LAF 3.3 official release

Yet another year has passed and Substance has celebrated its second birthday. As scheduled, the release for version 3.3 (Iowa) is available. The list of new features includes:

• Support for high DPI
• New skins: Business Blue Steel, Business Black Steel, Raven Graphite and Raven Graphite Glass
• Arc header painter
• Streamlined slider painting
• Animation on slider thumb proximity
• Flat title painter
• Themed button icons
• New watermark
• Tree decorations animation

In addition, the following new features from release 3.0 of laf-widget project are available:

• New modes for tab overview dialog
• Improving grid tab overview mode
• Support for ghost effects under other LAFs
• Focus looping animation

Thanks to all the bug submitters (especially Jan Erik) and the users for making this happen. The next release is planned for September. If you happen to be at this year's JavaOne, come and visit the java.net community corner on Thursday at 12:30 to learn more about Substance. The Substance plugin for NetBeans has been updated as well. You can also get it at the new NetBeans plugin portal - type the word "Substance" in the search box.

Comments

• Thanks for the update...it's great!

  Posted by: turgrid on April 16, 2007 at 04:08 PM

• Hi, Kirill, it's so greate that Substance is continuing to grow up. But I find a problem in Substance version 3, include 3.0,3.1,3.2,3.3. If my application has methods include JOptionPane such as "JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(.....)", if the titles,messages is Chinese, and my operation system(Win XP) is Chinese edition, it's fine, these charactor codes is correct. But if the operation System(Win XP) is English edition, all my Chinese charactors become rectangles.
  But if I use Substance 2(2.2 or 2.3), the charactors are correct if they are Chinese and the operatios system is English edition.
  So Kirill, how can I solve this problem? Is it a bug?

  Posted by: diggywang on April 16, 2007 at 08:24 PM

• diggywang - i've sent you a mail to discuss this issue. Thanks, Kirill.

  Posted by: kirillcool on April 16, 2007 at 08:38 PM

• I was running your Check application, and decided to add a watermark to one of my applications - the Vertical Gradient. But it doesn't ship with Substance. Is that (and the diagonal gradient) still available?

  Also, I was experimenting with some of the other watermarks (which I like BTW) on my black background. Some wash out the black background, some don't. For instance, Bubbles looks great on a black background, yet Metal Wall (which I was considering) makes the black look washed out.

  It would be nice to set the opacity of the watermarks.

  
  Thanks for the great library.

  Posted by: mgbacke on April 18, 2007 at 09:45 AM

• mgbacke,

  The watermarks you're talking about are in test.check package - these are not core watermarks. They are there to illustrate how to create a custom watermark (outside of the core Substance packages). Regrading the metal wall - some watermarks use only foreground painting (such as bubbles), while some use background fill as well (metal wall). You'll have to see which watermark makes sense for your application (and for your choice of theme).

  Thanks
  Kirill

  Posted by: kirillcool on April 18, 2007 at 09:55 AM

• Thanks. Found them, and they work.

  I'll have to experiment writing my own watermarks.

  Posted by: mgbacke on April 18, 2007 at 11:20 AM

• great work, thanks

  Posted by: lifeisadancer on April 27, 2007 at 02:38 AM

• I am having this strange problem with JOptionPane.showConfrmDialog(). When I close the dialog (via the X button), I get the following exception.

  Posted by: rpatell on May 09, 2007 at 01:30 PM

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