JDK 1.6 (Mustang) Swing GTK Look And Feel Screenshots

JDK 1.6 (AKA Mustang) Swing GTK Look And Feel Screenshots

A few months ago OS NEWS reported that the next version of Java (code name "Mustang") will feature native GTK components for the Swing API. This got us excited since, quite frankly, Swing's GTK look and feel has always been quite dissapointing. We downloaded the latest release candidate of JDK 1.6 to see how well the Swing GTK look and feel looks.

Here are some screenshots of the SwingSet2 demo application included with the JDK 1.6, these were taken on Fedora. As can be seen in the screenshots, Mustang picks up the GNOME theme and renders Swing components appropriately.


Clearlooks Theme




Bluecurve Theme






Crux Theme





Glider Theme

The Java Mustang (JDK 1.6)

Proposed Specification

The proposed specification will define the feature set for the next major release of the Java 2 Standard Edition platform, code named "Mustang", which is targeted to ship in 2006. Mustang is one of a ongoing series of J2SE feature releases. The goal is to ship feature releases on a regular 18-24 month cycle, with each release including a combination of quality improvements and new features.

This JSR will not itself define any new features or enhancements; it will, rather, enumerate features and enhancements defined in other JSRs or through the JCP maintenance process.
It is expected that most of the effort in the Mustang release will be toward product quality (bug fixing) and stability, with relatively less work going into new APIs and other kinds of features.

The JSR expert group will define a specification consisting of a target feature set for Mustang. This target set will be further refined during the early-draft and public review periods and will become the target feature set for the release. The goal is for the Mustang release to include the full target set, but depending upon design and implementation schedules some items may be deferred to a later release if they are unable to make the Mustang schedule. The final specification will reflect the actual content of the Mustang release.


The major themes of the Mustang release are expected to be
* Compatibility and Stability
* Diagnosability, Monitoring, and Management
* Ease of Development
* Enterprise Desktop
* XML & Web Services
* Transparency


Java SE 6 (JDK 1.6) highlights:

New Security features and enhancements:

• Native platform GSS/Kerberos integration
• Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) login module that employs LDAP authentication
• New Smart Card I/O API

Integrated Web Services:

New API for XML digital signature services for secure web services

New Client and Core Java Architecture for XML-Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0 APIs

New support for Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0

Enhanced Management & Serviceability:

Improved JMX Monitoring API

Runtime Support for dTrace (Solaris 10 and future Solaris OS releases only)

New custom deployment facilities

Increased Developer Productivity:

• Improved memory usage analysis and leak detection
• Significant library improvements
• Improvements to the Java Platform Debug Architecture (JPDA) & JVM Tool Interface

Improved User Experience:

• Look and feel updates to better match underlying platforms
• Improved desktop performance and integration
• Enhanced internationalization support Look and feel updates to better match underlying platforms
• Improved desktop performance and integration
• Enhanced internationalization support

Have plans to contribute, Go right here https://jdk6.dev.java.net/collaborate.html


Download the JDK 1.6 (Mustang) at http://download.java.net/jdk6/binaries/