Linked by Andy Roberts on Thu 19th May 2005 19:33 UTC
Java Swing comes with "pluggable look-and-feel technology", which essentially boils down to the fact that interfaces can be "skinned" (although this is simplifying a tad) and is therefore, extremely flexible. By default, Java ships with a cross-platform look-and-feel (LAF), which means your apps can look consistent across all platforms, or LAFs that mimic the look of a specific platform, say Windows, for example. However, one of the chief complaints of Java desktop applications is its "look". It basically stems from two issues:
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Aside from the opinions that Metal or other L&F are ugly, the pluggable L&F allowed me to subclass swing components to do useful things - like a tabbed page with a different icon for a "selected" page, without disabling the other pages. So I am in favor of it. However, the Sun code is rather murky, and it took a couple of weeks of hacking.