Question: Default Skin for 2.6.0

Spark Spark Dev
1

The new default skin of Spark does not receive good reception in my user group. Should be stay with the old Skin of Spark 2.5.8 as default for 2.6.0?

2

In each of my builds I have been changing the default skin to the Nimbus theme. Only problem is that Nimbus wasn’t released until Java 1.6 Update 10 so you have to make sure that this is the minimum version in your installer. You can set the DEFAULT_LOOK_AND_FEEL in the default.properties, for which I set mine equal to com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.NimbusLookAndFeel.

I also had to add a few lines to the Spark.java file as some of the nimbus theme does not play nice with the interface. Here is my patch code from eclipse:

Index: src/java/org/jivesoftware/Spark.java

===================================================================

— src/java/org/jivesoftware/Spark.java (revision 12228)

+++ src/java/org/jivesoftware/Spark.java (working copy)

@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@

import java.awt.EventQueue;

import java.awt.Font;

import java.io.File;

+import java.awt.Insets;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.util.Collection;

import java.util.HashSet;

@@ -245,7 +246,12 @@

}

UIManager.setLookAndFeel(laf);

  •        if (laf.toLowerCase().equals("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.nimbus.nimbuslookandfeel"))

  •        {

  •        UIManager.getLookAndFeelDefaults().put("Button.contentMargins", new Insets(3, 6, 3, 6));

  •        UIManager.getLookAndFeelDefaults().put("defaultFont", new Font("Tahoma", 0, 11));

  •        }

} catch (Exception e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

3

Recorded the JVM and Nimbus request as issues (http://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SPARK-1277; http://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SPARK-1278)

Spark-1278 is set to be included in 2.6.1 since we have only 3 weeks to go for 2.6.0 release

4

What issues with the default skin your users report (too dark, bad colors)? I think it is BusinessSilver? Personally i have no problems with it, though it is making all colors darker (dark blue instead of light blue, and brown instead of red - so new messages are brown in tab and group names are dark). While using 2.5.8 i liked old Sintetica look, but now i prefer Substance. I like how tabs look in Substance more than in Sintetica and some other minor stuff.

5

In some of the pre-RC1 builds the swing themes worked better than substance, but now it is just preference for me. I think Nimbus generally looks like a cleaner interface.

(1278) The fix above is actually for the button margins which in Nimbus are oddly shapped. Also the default text is a bit different so I have adjusted both in the code above to fit the interface better. I don’t know that I would consider it a major issue as you can set Nimbus using the theme selector, but it just needs some tweaking to look right.

(1277) I don’t know if java is really an issue other than to say if Java 1.6 update 10 or greater is not installed Nimbus should not be selectable.

6

Oh, btw, i’m not sure what is causing that, but latest SVN versions feel more sluggish than 2.5.8 or 2.6.0 Beta 1 on my older system (P4, 700 MB RAM). Though it is ok at home and maybe it can be affected by our antivirus program (Symantec is known for hogging PC resources and actually after installing it Outlook is freezing for me all the day). Current Spark version is locking on me time to time, after a long time not using it if i bring new chat window it will wait for 10-15 seconds before i can see my typing or switch tabs, etc. Again, this can be because of the other software, but older Spark was a bit faster.