apache pivot
I have spent a fair amount of time with apache pivot, authoring several components and peering into the guts of the system. Apache pivot is a small, UI library that demonstrates what can be done in java and how, relatively speaking, easy it is to produce something useful that is still robust. I encourage everyone to look at the project and give apache pivot a try. Using apache pivot has brought to light a few thoughts: Pivot uses skins to customize drawing behavior. Skins can be only implemented in java code. BXML is a great tool and BXML could be used to specify skins (and hence themes and all customization) using the concepts in WPF similar to templates. Templates in WPF are essentially the skins. However, pivot forces java coding and "skin" management complexity where none is needed. In fact, the entire skin concept can be removed in the spirit of WPF with no loss of control. The complexity of implementing templates is on the order of implementing a skin--and this would al...