More back story on Sea Glass

I had originally been thinking of a very iApp-like look and feel. I would have called it Aqvavit, for the play on Aqua, the Mac look and feel, and also because Aqvavit is fairly strong stuff.

Ken came up with the idea of using sea glass, with its matte finish and generally soft colors (though there are some browns, golds, and reds) as an inspiration. I think it’s a better idea than mine.

We still have a lot of work to do on this, from more controls to skin to more behavior to get the way we want it. At the moment, it’s a skinned Nimbus L&F, but I see us eventually developing our own framework, taking some code from Nimbus and Synth to accomplish our goals.

Neither Nimbus or Synth are really designed to be extended. Synth can be skinned, and Nimbus can be customized, but mainly in terms of the looks. The feel of the L&F is pretty much set by Synth. Since we want a somewhat different feel, and in some cases a different layout of components, we will have to move away from Synth.

We’ve spent the last few weeks bouncing ideas back and forth, making some false starts, and eventually settling on some pretty good ideas (mostly Ken’s). I’m currently working on designing the framework we’ll use to go forward.

Once this is done, I’ll get back to my real project, a recipe program called “Kitchen Alchemy”. It’ll use the Sea Glass look and feel!