If you are a Java developer, one of the first things you fall in love with is seeing your applications run on different platforms. Just give me a Jar file, War file, or the class files, and away I go.
Well, almost. Java is great at being cross-platform, but the greatest weakness in Java's cross-platform design is that each platform requires a different method of launching the application - and usually that is where most people get stuck. Sure, we can tell people to launch our applications using the command line, or we can use the Java Web Start tools. However, when it comes to making your Java application look and feel as close as possible to the native platform, you will need to do a little extra work on most platforms. This is especially true if you want to use the Eclipse SWT GUI toolkit.
SWT? Why on earth do you want to use that? This article is not about the merits of SWT or Swing, and it's not intended to convert anyone to use another toolkit. However, when it comes to making your application look and feel like a native application, SWT does a great job. So, without further ado...
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