As far as the “dark sdk” thingy goes, were you talking about something like?:
which looks to be based on:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/plaf.html
and a big thumbs up to @kwando, @jayfella, @nehon, and @david_bernard_31, as well. Great job, guys and thank you. The community needs a good hub to communicate from.
Game On,
Charles
Wow, most LAF I’ve seen until now look pretty ugly but this one actually looks pretty nice:
http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/40985/ez-on-da-ice
I tried default dark laf provided but couldn’t stand the windows background color 
I guess it’s really just a matter of taste, but I never found a Dark theme that was nice AND working correctly.
@normen looks nice indeed, some of our custom UI needs adjustment though (some bg colors are hard coded, probably my fault). I’ll fix this, maybe we could “recommend” this as the dark theme for the SDK.
Also the fact that it’s a plugin makes it pretty easy to install.
Here is what it looks like on windows, with some Font&Color customization
@nehon Er, actually, couldn’t we just… uh…make our own? I’m not confident or anything, but I think I could cobble something together for a look and feel, and then you guys can swap out my crap graphics with good stuff? If so, I can do that, and for whatever ver. netbeans/java you are wanting for your next stable release platform. I’m really waiting for @t0neg0d to show up on the forums again, before I can coordinate with her on the Visual GUI editor project… so I’ve got some time.
Game On,
Charles
Well IMO that’s a bad idea.
We already have a lot of work with the SDK and I really don’t want to have to maintain a swing look and feel.
It’s very nice to step up to support this, but, maybe you don’t realize how much work it is.
Isn’t it just like swapping out gui graphics for nifty or tonegod?
In this case, it looks to be a choice of Synth or Nimbus:
Synth:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/synthExample.html
and then Nimbus, which extends Synth:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/nimbus.html
and though Nimbus LAF might look like:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/_nimbusDefaults.html#primary
as far as a nicely put visual solution we could probably solve it effectively with:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/color.html
mainly because Nimbus uses vectorized coloring… So it might be as simple as swapping out three color values. Well, that and only running the whole “set to nimbus and swap color” once at first run/install time, and then letting the user do w/e afterwards with the schemes.
shall I give it a try? thoughts?
lol, the icon set that you guys have could be color vectorized, as well, but then that looks to be the kind of work load that you were wanting to avoid, right?
Nimbus looks pretty awful tbh. ez-on-da-ice is the first non-commercial LAF that looks good and is compatible to the special NetBeans windows that I know of. Another pretty nice looking LAF is this, but its commercial, we could get in contact with them if we may use it despite the fact that the SDK itself can be used for commercial purposes: Synthetica - Java Look And Feel
I’m making an assumption that when the stable 3.1 is released, it would be nice to have an Out Of The Box UI Theme for JME which coordinates with the Forum’s color scheme. It would probably be in the form of a plug-in that ships with the next stable Downloadable SDK link. This would be the download that currently uses Netbeans 7.3, but would probably be targeting Netbeans 8.0, or later, at that time. Am I correct on the this assumption?
OMG:
Blackeye looks amazing. It reminds me of good ol’ Bento skinned Winamp. It’s the closest to looking like this website. It explicitly states no non-commercial usage…plus, it doesn’t look like JME wouldn’t even qualify for the non-commercial licensed because anyone, including a commercial business could use JME:
http://www.javasoft.de/synthetica/license/
But, heck, it never hurts to try talking to them…
As far as long term:
Synthetica did not list pricing, and it doesn’t look to be a visual editor with preview, just the premade themes.
Easynth:
Looks to be a visual editor for java look n feel with a $245 dollar price tag. There doesn’t look to be any strings attached to using themes produced by the editor, though.
Hand coded:
free, and it looks like it would be a totally possible community contribution type project. I would like to go ahead and barf out a look and feel, this way, if my previous assumption is correct.
That’s really all I had to say, I’m heading back to learnin’ and programming.
Game On,
Charles
We are going to get in touch with the synthetical guys, and see what we can work out. They offer several themes so maybe we could package some of them.
Your offer is very appreciated, but, no one should spend time on this. A nice LAF is not what’s going to make the SDK or the engine work better. It’s an aside, and I’d rather it doesn’t cost too much to integrate and maintain it.
That’s why the ez-on-ice is already great because that’s just one click away. Though the Synthetica themes looks really awesome, so if we can have them, it would be great.
Awesome! Ok, I wish you core guys luck on the communications side of things.
May it be fruitful and hopefully easy.