Research And Implementation On Visual Customization Of Java Componnent Look And Feel

Java is an interpretive and totally object-oriented language. It has been successfully applied in many fields, such as network and mobile computing. From J2SE5.0 published by Sun Microsystems, Inc., a new Swing package called Synth has offered a new Look-and-Feel (L&F) "skin" appearance, making Java much improved in the field of UI (User interface).But, when a programmer utilizes Synth to design L&F, he needs describe lots of component properties, with over 100 components specific properties defined. That is troublesome for programmers. This paper designs and implements a visual component L&F customization toolkit via UML modeling and XML processing. The key is to visually customize component L&F through setting component properties and creates corresponding XML file. The system is mainly composed of three modules: drawing board, component properties editor, image preview and image border editor. By this toolkit user may set component properties in the property editor, according to one's own requirement, and preview the effect. If satisfied, the XML file with the record of component L&F properties will be automatically created and saved. If the user is not satisfied with image offered by the system, he can edit it or draw new one in the drawing board and save it as .png file and use it again in the mentioned process.This paper analyzes the principle and structure of the visual customization of component L&F based on Java Synth, specify the goal of the toolkit and implements the main functions of the toolkit.