Engineer tools like the familiar IDEs (Eclipse/IDEA/NetBeans etc.) have user interfaces increasingly different from office tools like Microsoft Office. When creating applications for end users it is important to aim for the look and feel this group is comfortable with rather than what would be intuitive for the engineer. At Exie AS we have developed an open source Swing look and feel component that dramatically simplifies this task.

Just as it is important to utilize frameworks to improve productivity when developing web-based solution, so is the case with rich clients/desktop applications. A significant part of a desktop application consists of UI and IO plumbing. When should various menus, buttons and tool bars be enabled? Flexible docking frameworks, user preferences etc. There are various RCP frameworks available, however for a Swing based client the NetBeans RCP is perhaps the most complete.

How to create an NetBeans RCP client and make it look like a member of the Microsoft Office package? It is quite easy, and I am going to show you how.