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Comment by cosmotic | Hacker News Reader

Java is nice because it's nearly trivial to get native look and feel.

I'm not quite going to downvote you for this, just share my observation that I have never, once, used a Java app which has what I would consider a "native look and feel" for macOS.

Better than Electron? Sure. But native? Not even close.

Perhaps it's different on other platforms; I wouldn't know.

Because the lazy devs haven't read books like this,

http://filthyrichclients.org/

Or willng to shell out money to frameworks like this,

http://www.jgoodies.com/

Well I'm not a desktop Java developer anymore (thank the Gods) so I'll just take your word for it.

On a practical level, is there some example of a Java app which I could download and try out for native look and feel? See if my custom menu items show up, if I can drag a document window bar icon onto another application, basic stuff like that?

IDEA and related products are written in java and look and feel native to some degree. CyberDuck is java. Most developers don't know its so so easy to just toggle the look and feel to be native. A lot of app designers decide non-native even when it's native code, see adobe products.

Is that sarcasm? Didn't seem very straightforward last time I checked.

Not sarcasm; ignoring the surrounding try catch block, it's one line of code.

Most people don't know about LAFs.

A travesty, really

Can you supply an example? I gave up on Java GUI over 20 years ago because it looked horrible.

You were probably Doing It Wrong. The default L&F is not good, but its one line of code to select the native L&F. I commented on another post with a few example above.

Look up modern JavaFX apps, easy to skin with css.

JavaFX's text rendering is busted on macOS since Mojave in 2018:

https://github.com/javafxports/openjdk-jfx/issues/229#issuec...

So I give it an 'F' for the "look" part of look-n-feel.

I don't consider JavaFX a viable option. No native look and feel means automatic disqualification.

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