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Changing FreeGuide's look and feel

You can style/theme FreeGuide by using so-called Look and Feels. You can change the look-and-feel used by FreeGuide by going to the Tools menu and choosing Options. Now click on General and choose a look-and-feel from the drop-down.

Installing new Look-and-Feels

You can download Java Look-and-Feels from lots of places. Some sites, such as javootoo.com provide links to many different look-and-feels that are available for download under licenses varying from open source to proprietary and commercial. You may also want to try a search on your favorite search engine.

When you download a look-and-feel, it should include instructions for installing it. Some may have requirements that others do not; for example, some will require you to specify additional information on the command line to use the look-and-feel. Therefore, it is important that you read the instructions that came with your look-and-feel.

In all cases, however, the look-and-feel must appear in FreeGuide's classpath. To include the look-and-feel in the classpath, modify the shortcut you are using to start FreeGuide to include the -classpath command-line option. The command line should look something like those shown below (make sure you use the correct locations for your files):

javaw -classpath "C:\path\to\my\LookAndFeel.jar" ...

Where "..." means fill in the rest of the shortcut command that was already present.

The GTK Look-and-Feel

The GTK look-and-feel is designed to look like the rest of your desktop if you are using the GNOME desktop environment on Linux. However, Windows users can also use the GTK look-and-feel, if you download the Java JDK (developers' kit) instead of just the JRE (runtime environment). The advantage of the GTK look-and-feel is that you can use any of many available the GNOME desktop themes with it, which opens up a large array of possible looks for FreeGuide.

GTK+ themes are available from a number of websites, including GNOME and freshmeat.net.