Is a certain Look and Feel guaranteed to be available?

Question

From what I've found out, the Nimbus Look and Feel was introduced in Java 6 Update 10.

I have project where I use that Look and Feel.

Is there any situation where, the user has a Java VM newer than 6 update 10 (for example 6 update 26) and the Nimbus Look and Feel is not available ? This situation might occur if for example, Look and Feels can be manually/explicitly removed, but I've not been able to find out if this can be done.

So basically, is there a 100 % guarantee that, if the user has the proper Java VM version, the Nimbus Look and Feel will be available 100 % of the time ?

Thank you in advance.

Contortionist

Answer 1

There's no clear way for a user to remove a particular Look & Feel from their JVM. Anything is possible, though.

What's wrong with just checking for it in the code?

Ankerite

Well, a particular problem is with JTextFields. In Nimbus their height is a lot smaller and, if Nimbus is applied, I must make them bigger. – Contortionist

Are you asking how to detect and react to Nimbus being installed? – Ankerite

No, I know how to do that. I'm asking if I need to. If there is no way a user can remove Look and Feel's from the JVM, then I don't need to. But if he can... – Contortionist

Answer 2

In Java 7 the package path is changed ("sun" removed: com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel): javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel, so it depends how you invoke the look and feel. In general this action of oracle might be seen as a positive endorsement of the nimbus look and feel.

Leptorrhine

Note that they didn't remove the old name. They retained the class com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel as an empty extension of javax.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel, so code which uses the Java 6 class name still works fine. – Ebert