Kirill Grouchnikov's Blog: Community: NetBeans Archives

I’m very happy to report that NetBeans developers have unrolled the changes that broke the Substance NetBeans module (reported in early May on NetBeans bug tracker). And so, if you’re using the daily builds of NetBeans 6.0 (after July 26th), you can install the latest development drop of Substance 4.0 module (code-named Key Largo).

Many thanks to NetBeans team and Standa Aubrecht in particular for listening to the community and making these changes that allow third-party look-and-feels to provide modules for both NetBeans IDE itself and NetBeans RCP programs. Standa was courteous enough to provide a patch that removes usage of deprecated APIs and unnecessary functionality. The only minor defect that will be fixed in the consistent appearance for tab scroll buttons.

Cross-posted at Pushing Pixels.

NetBeans look and feel competition - a low-hanging iPod

Posted by kirillcool on December 26, 2005 at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

About two weeks ago NetBeans has announced a Look and Feel competition (which should really by Look only, since they are accepting screenshots). One of the more enjoyable ways to create an attractive screenshot (although this depends on male-to-female ratio on the judging panel :) is to use the Substance NB module that allows using the Substance LAF integrated into the View menu.

One of the users has asked me if it would be possible to make the watermark image "bleed" through the editor panel. Obviously, without changing the NB editor module it's not possible. However, now it is possible to make the watermark bleed through trees, tables and lists. First, you are welcome to view a few Substance-enhanced NetBeans screenshots - note that the trees / tables / lists are opaque and do not show the watermark. Starting from the latest drop of version 2.2 (available in NBM download), Substance supports the -Dsubstancelaf.watermark.tobleed VM flag (no value needed). Once specified, this flag makes all trees, tables and lists transparent. Here's a screenshot to illustrate this (note the left-side trees that show the watermark - click for a fullsize view):

Note that although it's nice to use this option for the above competition, not all NetBeans screens will look good using this VM flag. Although this option instructs all trees, tables and lists (along with the cell renderers) to be transparent, it can't prevent the cell renderers from painting their own background if they override the paint() method. On the other hand this option can spot such problematic places in your application (unless they're there on purpose).

In addition, the latest NBM version (under dev 2.2 directory) allows changing the watermark image from View -> Watermark -> Image menu. The history is limited to five entries (updated on selection) and persisted.

One last thing - if you like Substance, help internationalize it! (small print - eternal glory is not guaranteed :) Starting from version 2.2 (code-named El Paso) the additional UI elements (system menu items, heap status panel, menu search panel) are internationalized. You are welcome to view the list of available translations and send me additional translations to kirillcool [at] yahoo.com. Thanks in advance

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