Adam Bien's been posting these "Swing looks great" posts lately. Today he posted one about Cezanne, named after Paul Cezanne (one of my favorite artists), which does look nice.
Cezanne is a look and feel engine for Swing or JavaFX, from Centigrade.de. It looks commercial, but if you're doing commercial desktop apps, it's probably worth it. It looks awesome.
no where on the website does it say how much a license costs. Anyone know?
no where on the website does it say how much a license costs. Anyone know?
that's because they probably don't sell it directly to the user, they build your User Interface for you using their framework.
no where on the website does it say how much a license costs. Anyone know?
that's because they probably don't sell it directly to the user, they build your User Interface for you using their framework.
That's too bad. I wonder how well that business model scales for them. It would be nice to use the framework without having to hire them to build the interface.
no where on the website does it say how much a license costs. Anyone know?
that's because they probably don't sell it directly to the user, they build your User Interface for you using their framework.
That's too bad. I wonder how well that business model scales for them. It would be nice to use the framework without having to hire them to build the interface.
First of all, great to hear that the discussion about Cezanne developed so dynamically. Yet, before any wrong assumptions arise let me give you a bit more information on Cezanne:
Cezanne itself is a Look and Feel engine and in this respect enables Centigrade to create compelling Java Swing UIs much easier and cost-effective than with standard means. Cezanne itself has no "look" on its own - it is more the driver for possible themes that run on it. So, the theme screenshot that we present on our website and that Adam Bien posted in his blog (the one with the nice leather texture :) is just an example of what Cezanne is capable of.
As (partially) correctly assumed, we have one business model that includes selling the Cezanne Look and Feel engine bundled with the individual service of creating an exclusive Look and Feel theme for our customers. However, that's not the end of the story.
The other part of the story is that beginning of next year (presumably February) we will start selling an out-of-the-box stock Look and Feel theme called "BizLaf" which will of course ship together with Cezanne but - and that's I guess the most interesting thing about it - is a full-fledged theme and has a look, feel and value of its own. Regarding pricing we will go public early next year - but as much as that: There will be BizLaf bundles that will be affordable not only for Enterprises but also for small software vendors.
I encourage everyone who wants to be kept posted on updates about BizLaf or Cezanne (e.g. in terms of pricing) to drop us a line to cezanne at centigrade dot de.
the additional info is useful.
An insight from a Google engineer "JXInsight's management console is the first Java application that does not look or perform like Java".
The Swing UI toolkit is extremely powerful and in the hands of a experienced designer (especially with a graphics background) you can create unique and visually beautiful displays. Check out some screen shots!!
http://www.jinspired.com/products/jxinsight/new-in-5.1.html
Sadly most developers are tasked with creating the UI for Java applications because they know how to write Java code not because they have any aesthetic inclinations.
Once you overcome the look challenges then it comes down to performance and again Java applications suffer because not much attention is given to performance of desktops app even when developed by experts. I did not upgrade my IDEA installation for years because of this. Only now in the latest release has JetBrains returned to the form that I had been accustomed too in very early releases.
By the way Adam Bien's website is horrendously ugly and unusable.
The design aspect is 5-7 years behind today's standards. The demo app (!) looks dated and rather cheap. Agree with Bill, his app is much better designed (visually wise). Has anyone tried to change the window size? The whole thing starts refreshing and blinks excessively. I'd be embarrassed to even show it...
I've seen better L&F before and I don't see the excitement for this one yet...
Sorry,
Nikita Ivanov.
The large number of excited ackknowledgments that we receive shows us that our Look and Feels cannot be that far away from being attractive as you describe, so I am glad we can book it under "We haven't met with your individual taste." (apart from the fact that IMO excessive critism should always be coupled with more detailed reasoning).
Regarding the flickering that you describe: this only occurs under Mac OS X and is a problem of the JVM itself that we cannot even get technical access to and therefore cannot resolve on our side. Hopefully, now that Oracle and Apple work closer together, the JVM will be relieved from such shortcomings. Not showing the entire Mac OS X demo at all just because of this single shortcoming is not a reasonable option for us.
