Summary

Section 14.1 Introduction

• A graphical user interface (GUI; p. 550) presents a user-friendly mechanism for interacting with an application. A GUI gives an application a distinctive look and feel (p. 555).

• Providing different applications with consistent, intuitive user-interface components gives users a sense of familarity with a new application, so that they can learn it more quickly.

• GUIs are built from GUI components (p. 550)—sometimes called controls or widgets.

Section 14.2 Java’s New Nimbus Look-and-Feel

• As of Java SE 6 update 10, Java comes bundled with a new, elegant, cross-platform look-and-feel known as Nimbus (p. 551).

• To set Nimbus as the default for all Java applications, create a swing.properties text file in the lib folder of your JDK and JRE installation folders. Place the following line of code in the file:

  swing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel

• To select Nimbus on an application-by-application basis, place the following command-line argument after the java command and before the application’s name when you run the application:

  -Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel