Bloggeriffic Friday!

Finally, an answer, at least with the oft maligned [by myself -- and others] Swing, to the age old question, "How do I ensure my customer doesn't see a well-made GUI and think the entire application is done?" In VB, this is horrible. People will spend time doing the "fun work" dragging buttons in non-standard, non-abstracted ways all over a form, hit run, and the customer thinks the app's almost done. Au contraire, mon frere, it's hardly begun, and in fact what's been done might have only compounded the problem.

So the idea [with the Napkin look & feel] is to create a complete look and feel that can be used while the thing is not done which will convey an emotional message to match the rational one. As pieces of the work are done, the GUI for those pieces can be switched to use the 'formal' (final) look and feel, allowing someone looking at demos over time to see the progress of the entire system reflected in the expression of the GUI.

The look looks like all the GUI widgets were scrawled with pencil on paper. In theory, to go live you'd just change to your final look and feel -- either the failed Java look & feel, native, or the horrible Motif, among others. Neat.

Take a look -- as long as Sourceforge is up to dealing the bytes (and you've got a pretty recent Java VM installed) you can view a demo with WebStart.