Text components in Substance 6.0

October 27th, 2009 | 14 Comments »

One of the items on the roadmap for version 6.0 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Sonoma) is to polish the appearance of existing components. Today i’m going to talk about visual enhancements done for the text components in the latest 6.0dev drop of the library.

These enhancements address two major points:

  • Adding more contrast to screens that have a lot of user input fields, such as text fields, formatted text fields and password fields – by creating an “inset” look
  • Modernizing the appearance of these controls – by smoothing the corners and borders

Here is a screenshot with a few text fields under Business skin in release 5.3:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-business-old.png

And here are the same text fields under the latest 6.0dev drop:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-business-new.png

The same text fields under Gemini skin in release 5.3:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-gemini-old.png

and under the same skin in the latest 6.0dev drop:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-gemini-new.png

The same text fields under a more colorful Dust Coffee skin in release 5.3:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-dustcoffee-old.png

and under the same skin in the latest 6.0dev drop:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-dustcoffee-new.png

Finally, the same text fields under the dark Graphite skin in release 5.3:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-graphite-old.png

and under the same skin in the latest 6.0dev drop:

https://substance.dev.java.net/release-info/6.0/textfields-graphite-new.png

Note that this is still work on progress, and you’re more than welcome to leave comments on the new look.

Related posts:

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  2. Comboboxes in Substance 6.0 One of the items on the roadmap for version 6.0 of Substance look-and-feel (code-named Sonoma)...
  3. Starting work on Substance plugin for JIDE components This week i have started working on providing Substance plugin for the JIDE common layer...
  4. Modern borders on Swing components One item suggested by Romain a year ago and missing up until now in Substance...

14 Comments on “Text components in Substance 6.0”

  1. 1 RS said at 9:13 am on October 27th, 2009:

    Looks like there is some influence form KDE’s Oxygen theme for Qt.

  2. 2 JOKe said at 11:34 am on October 27th, 2009:

    I like the new 6.0dev but for some applications I think I will prefer the older way. It will be nice if you can enable/disable the new look and feel of text fields with rounder corners.
    Many people will like the old way which is more “windows native” and many people maybe will prefer the rounder corners which are more Mac or KDE 4 oriented.

  3. 3 Pedro Duque Vieira said at 5:16 pm on October 27th, 2009:

    Looks very nice. I agree with JOKe, this should be customizable.

  4. 4 Kirill Grouchnikov said at 8:33 pm on October 27th, 2009:

    RS – this was not intentional, but now that you mention it, it does look very similar.

    JOKe, Pedro – it’s quite unlikely that there will be an option to toggle the previous look. It’s just not feasible to have all these switches and continue to have a maintainable body of code.

    Thanks
    Kirill

  5. 5 Tbee said at 11:50 pm on October 27th, 2009:

    I like the borders, gives the screen a more refined look.

  6. 6 soma said at 3:38 am on October 28th, 2009:

    I like the new look, they certainly look more modern!

  7. 7 Nick said at 6:59 am on October 28th, 2009:

    I really like this new look. It does a great job of indicating that something has been/has to be input.

    In fact, it’s rather annoying as once you’ve looked at 6.0dev, the 5.3 text fields look rubbish in comparison!

  8. 8 Adam said at 8:33 am on October 28th, 2009:

    Great job, I am always surprised at how much better things can look with such minor tweaks. Attention to detail is why Substance rocks!

  9. 9 Mathias said at 10:32 am on October 28th, 2009:

    I like the lock icon, but I don’t like that it shifts the text contents to the right. You could move it to the right side of the component, and perhaps make it bigger so it stands out.

  10. 10 Kirill Grouchnikov said at 12:27 pm on October 28th, 2009:

    Mathias,

    The location / size / insets of the lock indication have remained unchanged since May 2006, and i have not received any feedback about it. As far as i can tell, either everybody is OK with it, or nobody is using it – most probably the later.

    At the present moment i am inclined to leave the visuals as they are. Since the lock is an opt-in, you can always create your own widget (following the code in this class).

    Thanks
    Kirill

  11. 11 Marcel said at 10:53 pm on October 29th, 2009:

    I agree to Mathias. Don’t shift the text to the right. The first character should align accordingly to the other rows. This is very important…

  12. 12 Majid Keshtidar said at 8:03 pm on October 31st, 2009:

    great move, final release date?

  13. 13 Kirill Grouchnikov said at 8:16 pm on October 31st, 2009:

    Majid,

    I have just started working on version 6.0 and i don’t have any specific release date. It will take anywhere between 3 and 5 months, placing it around early spring 2010.

    Thanks
    Kirill

  14. 14 Java desktop links of the week, November 2 | Jonathan Giles said at 12:57 pm on November 1st, 2009:

    [...] Flamingo 4.2, and progress in the Substance look and feel. In particular, he has been focusing on text components, comboboxes (including feedback on comboboxes), and [...]