This is an implementation of Squareness as a Java Pluggable Look And Feel for the Swing GUI Toolkit. This implementation of Squareness was one of the reasons to start the development of Squareness. I wanted the Java programs I use to look like the rest of the applications I use.

The Squareness Look And Feel is still in development. Some controls haven't been worked on and some are not yet fully finished. Nevertheless I'm using it without problems for some time now.

The big new feature of Squareness Look And Feel 2.0 is theme support. You can create your own themes by subclassing net.beeger.squareness.theme.SquarenessTheme or by creating theme files, which are ordinary property files that contain the color ids of the Squareness colors with their theme specific color values. It is highly recommended to use the Colorizer tool for the creation of such theme files. You can use net.beeger.squareness.theme.PropertiesSquarenessTheme to load those theme files

If you don't don't have the source code of the application on which you want to use Squareness Look And Feel with an own color theme, a theme package is the right choice. A theme package is - though it has the suffix "slftp" (for Squareness Look And Feel Theme Package) - an ordinary ZIP file. It contains theme files (property files with the suffix "slft" for Squareness Look And Feel Theme) and themeselector.slfts (slfts for Squareness Look And Feel Theme Selector). This file has only one line "currentTheme=nameoftheme.slft"

Put the theme package into the classpath of your application. You can also put both squareness.jar and your theme package into your jre/lib/ext directory. Thus both files will be in the classpath of each application that is started with this Java Runtime Environment. Squarness Look And Feel finds the theme selector if there is one in the current classpath and automatically loads the specified theme.

Take a look at the provided theme package and try it out. The included theme is a greyish color theme. So the difference should be visible.

The current release of Squareness Look And Feel works well with J2SDK 1.5.0. The only thing that is broken under J2SDK 1.5.0 are the toggle buttons in the tool bar of SwingSet2 and the toolbar buttons of jEdit. They don't look as intended, but they work.No further problems have been found, yet.

The addition of the Synth Look and Feel to the J2SDK also introduced changes into the Basic Look And Feel, which is the base for most - maybe even all - look and feels. Those changes allow a look and feel to define the buttons for the tabbed pane and add support for the mouse over mode. I will start on a new J2SDK 1.5.0 based release of Squareness Look And Feel after the release of Squareness 2.0 for Windowblinds.