I’m posting here the answers to a comment I got on a previous post in this blog:

> Hey Fred,
> At a real quick glance, it appears that SkinLF and Synth are very similar. Both appear to have the goal of making the Swing plaf truly pluggable with minimal code.

> From your experiences with Synth, can you summarize some of the main differences between Synth and SkinLF?”

SkinLF

• SkinLF works with JDK 1.4 and later
• SkinLF supports GTK and KDE themes (well it supports some old versions of them)
• SkinLF has reach a good level of maturity
• SkinLF is not being extended - only major bugfixes are fixed
• SkinLF has several themepacks (skins) at http://www.javootoo.com

Synth

• Synth has been made publicly available in JDK 1.5
• Synth uses XML to define themes
• Developers can programatically extend Synth
• Synth is new and is supported by Sun
• Only few themes available (but it is pretty new)

> Also, do you forsee the possibilty that Synth/SkinLF might someday render the need for custom-coded L&F packages obsolete?”

Sun has already implement one look and feel with Synth, the Linux GTK look and feel. I hope everyone will move to the Synth wagon, this will mean no more maintenance for SkinLF Things are moving, look at Synthetica, also Sun is working on providing more examples. I’d like to see professional services offered by graphic designers. They would design and implement the look and feel with Synth, not the current Synth but one where no java code will be needed to create new good looking interfaces.