FlatLaf VS compose-multiplatform

JVM UI isn't so bad. I've written some pretty modern looking UI with it. The sophisticated controls are all there.

Modern JavaFX theme: https://github.com/mkpaz/atlantafx

Modern Swing theme: https://github.com/JFormDesigner/FlatLaf

And these days Compose Multiplatform: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/compose-multiplatform/

I tend to use Kotlin rather than Java but of course Java is perfectly fine too. You can also use Clojure.

If you use any of those frameworks you can distribute to Win/Mac/Linux in one command with Conveyor. It's free for open source apps and can do self-signing for Windows if you don't want to pay for the certificates or the Store (but the Store is super cheap these days, $19 one off payment for an individual). Also supports Electron and Flutter if you want to use those.

From those frameworks you can then access whatever parts of the Windows API you want. Flutter even has WinRT bindings these days! So it's not quite so bad.

FlatLaf, a modern open-source cross-platform Look and Feel for Java Swing desktop applications, brings exciting new features in versions 3.0 and 3.1 🎉 😀

Here’s the link to the “extras” subproject, and there you’ll find a section on the “UI Inspector” tool.

Swing with FlatLaf - https://github.com/JFormDesigner/FlatLaf

Take a look at FlatLAF:

https://github.com/JFormDesigner/FlatLaf

They have done a great job bringing a modern appearance to the Swing components.

Creating your own Look and Feel is a huge task (just look at the size of e.g. the FlatLaf code.

I too find it a bit frustrating at HiDPI. Best I've come up with is to use https://github.com/JFormDesigner/FlatLaf

And as far as Swing's aesthetics, I only agree with the sentiment that 'it's ugly' if a custom LAF isn't used, like one from flatlaf.

So, to add file associations, we need to be able to pass both the .properties file and the --file-associations option. At the time of writing this article, the org.jetbrains.compose plugin doesn't provide such a mechanism. There is an open issue on GitHub that describes a possible workaround, which, unfortunately seems to not work on macOS.

JetBrains has a simplified example of a general-purpose Compose text viewer here: https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform/blob/master/examples/codeviewer/shared/src/commonMain/kotlin/org/jetbrains/codeviewer/ui/editor/Editor.kt


Compose for desktop has a scrollbar component available. You probably can't use that directly on Android, but you could probably steal most of its code.

My company uses https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform to make a desktop app in Kotlin. It's amazing and fantastic. It's basically as mature as using Kotlin in an Android app.

Kamel is an asynchronous media loading library for Compose Multiplatform.

Kotlin Compose Multiplatform is the way to do Desktop apps. https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform

As for missing controls, a common one is a grid. They have built in grids, but again they are built for Android and don't make any sense in a desktop app. There is no simple way to create an Excel-like Data Grid like you might see in Windows Forms, although it can be done. https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-multiplatform/issues/344.