Substance 5.2 (code-named Quebec) is going to have a few new skins. About a week ago i wrote about the new Dust skin, and today it is joined by the new Dust Coffee skin. If you want to take it for a spin, click on the WebStart button below and change the skin to Dust Coffee from the “Skins” menu:

To use it in your application, you have the following three options:

• -Dswing.defaultlaf=org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceDustCoffeeLookAndFeel
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel(new SubstanceDustCoffeeLookAndFeel())
• UIManager.setLookAndFeel("org.jvnet.substance.skin.SubstanceDustCoffeeLookAndFeel");

While it takes most of the visuals from Dust, it changes the colors of the default decoration area to a light yellowish brown, and uses the active color scheme of the Creme Coffee. In addition, the latest 5.2dev drop brings a few contrast improvements to both Dust and Dust Coffee that address some of the problematic visuals pointed out by Andrey Eremchenko. As before, this is an ongoing process and all core Substance skins continue to be polished throughout the release cycles.

Here are a few screenshots that show the new Dust Coffee skin. A small frame with a tabbed pane and a few different controls:

A frame with menu bar, tool bar and status bar from SwingX project:

A thumbnail of the main Substance test application (click for full-size view):

As with all Substance core skins, this is work in progress and will be polished over time. In the meantime, you’re more than welcome to take the latest 5.2dev drop for a spin and leave your comments. Note that both Dust and Dust Coffee do not play well with the Flamingo ribbon component. This will be addressed in the next major Substance release tentatively planned for autumn ’09.