A number of people have asked me recently can I create this look or that look using CSS in JavaFX. Or they have said that you could never do that! So I thought I would do a little experiment and try recreating a bunch of common button styles purely using CSS. So without further ado, here is the result:
All of these are mostly created with multiple background fill layers each with a gradient. Then there is a little font tweaking and some subtle effects. So for example all you need to make a JavaFX button look like a Windows 7 button is:
#windows7-default {
-fx-background-color:
#3c7fb1,
linear-gradient(#fafdfe, #e8f5fc),
linear-gradient(#eaf6fd 0%, #d9f0fc 49%, #bee6fd 50%, #a7d9f5 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2;
-fx-background-radius: 3,2,1;
-fx-padding: 3 30 3 30;
-fx-text-fill: black;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
}
The first line defines the 3 background fills, first is solid color and the other two are linear gradients. The background-insets offsets the backgrounds so they do not 100% paint over each other and the second background is 1px in from the outside and the 3rd background is 2px in from the outside of the button. The background-radius us setting the corner radius’s of the 3 backgrounds getting smaller as the backgrounds move in, this makes the gap between the borders a consistent 1 pixel all the way around. Padding adds extra space around the text to make the button bigger by default. Then the last two lines set the text color and size. That is all there is too it.
I have not included styles for the pressed, over and focused states of all the buttons but they can all be easily added in a similar way. I have included a over and pressed state for the “Record Sales” button as a example.
You can download the complete Netbeans project with all the code here.
ButtonStyles.zip
Here is the CSS code of all the button styles you see above:
#green {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(#f0ff35, #a9ff00),
radial-gradient(center 50% -40%, radius 200%, #b8ee36 45%, #80c800 50%);
-fx-background-radius: 6, 5;
-fx-background-insets: 0, 1;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.4) , 5, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
-fx-text-fill: #395306;
}
#round-red {
-fx-background-color: linear-gradient(#ff5400, #be1d00);
-fx-background-radius: 30;
-fx-background-insets: 0;
-fx-text-fill: white;
}
#bevel-grey {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(#f2f2f2, #d6d6d6),
linear-gradient(#fcfcfc 0%, #d9d9d9 20%, #d6d6d6 100%),
linear-gradient(#dddddd 0%, #f6f6f6 50%);
-fx-background-radius: 8,7,6;
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2;
-fx-text-fill: black;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.6) , 5, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
}
#glass-grey {
-fx-background-color:
#c3c4c4,
linear-gradient(#d6d6d6 50%, white 100%),
radial-gradient(center 50% -40%, radius 200%, #e6e6e6 45%, rgba(230,230,230,0) 50%);
-fx-background-radius: 30;
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,1;
-fx-text-fill: black;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.6) , 3, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
}
#shiny-orange {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(#ffd65b, #e68400),
linear-gradient(#ffef84, #f2ba44),
linear-gradient(#ffea6a, #efaa22),
linear-gradient(#ffe657 0%, #f8c202 50%, #eea10b 100%),
linear-gradient(from 0% 0% to 15% 50%, rgba(255,255,255,0.9), rgba(255,255,255,0));
-fx-background-radius: 30;
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2,3,0;
-fx-text-fill: #654b00;
-fx-font-weight: bold;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
-fx-padding: 10 20 10 20;
}
#dark-blue {
-fx-background-color:
#090a0c,
linear-gradient(#38424b 0%, #1f2429 20%, #191d22 100%),
linear-gradient(#20262b, #191d22),
radial-gradient(center 50% 0%, radius 100%, rgba(114,131,148,0.9), rgba(255,255,255,0));
-fx-background-radius: 5,4,3,5;
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2,0;
-fx-text-fill: white;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.6) , 5, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
-fx-font-family: "Arial";
-fx-text-fill: linear-gradient(white, #d0d0d0);
-fx-font-size: 12px;
-fx-padding: 10 20 10 20;
}
#dark-blue Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.9) , 1, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
}
#record-sales {
-fx-padding: 8 15 15 15;
-fx-background-insets: 0,0 0 5 0, 0 0 6 0, 0 0 7 0;
-fx-background-radius: 8;
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(from 0% 93% to 0% 100%, #a34313 0%, #903b12 100%),
#9d4024,
#d86e3a,
radial-gradient(center 50% 50%, radius 100%, #d86e3a, #c54e2c);
-fx-effect: dropshadow( gaussian , rgba(0,0,0,0.75) , 4,0,0,1 );
-fx-font-weight: bold;
-fx-font-size: 1.1em;
}
#record-sales:hover {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(from 0% 93% to 0% 100%, #a34313 0%, #903b12 100%),
#9d4024,
#d86e3a,
radial-gradient(center 50% 50%, radius 100%, #ea7f4b, #c54e2c);
}
#record-sales:pressed {
-fx-padding: 10 15 13 15;
-fx-background-insets: 2 0 0 0,2 0 3 0, 2 0 4 0, 2 0 5 0;
}
#record-sales Text {
-fx-fill: white;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( gaussian , #a30000 , 0,0,0,2 );
}
#rich-blue {
-fx-background-color:
#000000,
linear-gradient(#7ebcea, #2f4b8f),
linear-gradient(#426ab7, #263e75),
linear-gradient(#395cab, #223768);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2,3;
-fx-background-radius: 3,2,2,2;
-fx-padding: 12 30 12 30;
-fx-text-fill: white;
-fx-font-size: 12px;
}
#rich-blue Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.8) , 0, 0.0 , 0 , 1);
}
#big-yellow {
-fx-background-color:
#ecebe9,
rgba(0,0,0,0.05),
linear-gradient(#dcca8a, #c7a740),
linear-gradient(#f9f2d6 0%, #f4e5bc 20%, #e6c75d 80%, #e2c045 100%),
linear-gradient(#f6ebbe, #e6c34d);
-fx-background-insets: 0,9 9 8 9,9,10,11;
-fx-background-radius: 50;
-fx-padding: 15 30 15 30;
-fx-font-family: "Helvetica";
-fx-font-size: 18px;
-fx-text-fill: #311c09;
-fx-effect: innershadow( three-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.1) , 2, 0.0 , 0 , 1);
}
#big-yellow Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , rgba(255,255,255,0.5) , 0, 0.0 , 0 , 1);
}
#iphone-toolbar {
-fx-background-color: linear-gradient(#98a8bd 0%, #8195af 25%, #6d86a4 100%);
}
#iphone {
-fx-background-color:
#a6b5c9,
linear-gradient(#303842 0%, #3e5577 20%, #375074 100%),
linear-gradient(#768aa5 0%, #849cbb 5%, #5877a2 50%, #486a9a 51%, #4a6c9b 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0 0 -1 0,0,1;
-fx-background-radius: 5,5,4;
-fx-padding: 7 30 7 30;
-fx-text-fill: #242d35;
-fx-font-family: "Helvetica";
-fx-font-size: 12px;
-fx-text-fill: white;
}
#iphone Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , rgba(0,0,0,0.8) , 0, 0.0 , 0 , -1 );
}
#ipad-dark-grey {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(#686868 0%, #232723 25%, #373837 75%, #757575 100%),
linear-gradient(#020b02, #3a3a3a),
linear-gradient(#9d9e9d 0%, #6b6a6b 20%, #343534 80%, #242424 100%),
linear-gradient(#8a8a8a 0%, #6b6a6b 20%, #343534 80%, #262626 100%),
linear-gradient(#777777 0%, #606060 50%, #505250 51%, #2a2b2a 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,4,5,6;
-fx-background-radius: 9,8,5,4,3;
-fx-padding: 15 30 15 30;
-fx-font-family: "Helvetica";
-fx-font-size: 18px;
-fx-font-weight: bold;
-fx-text-fill: white;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(255,255,255,0.2) , 1, 0.0 , 0 , 1);
}
#ipad-dark-grey Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , black , 0, 0.0 , 0 , -1 );
}
#ipad-grey {
-fx-background-color:
linear-gradient(#686868 0%, #232723 25%, #373837 75%, #757575 100%),
linear-gradient(#020b02, #3a3a3a),
linear-gradient(#b9b9b9 0%, #c2c2c2 20%, #afafaf 80%, #c8c8c8 100%),
linear-gradient(#f5f5f5 0%, #dbdbdb 50%, #cacaca 51%, #d7d7d7 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,4,5;
-fx-background-radius: 9,8,5,4;
-fx-padding: 15 30 15 30;
-fx-font-family: "Helvetica";
-fx-font-size: 18px;
-fx-font-weight: bold;
-fx-text-fill: #333333;
-fx-effect: dropshadow( three-pass-box , rgba(255,255,255,0.2) , 1, 0.0 , 0 , 1);
}
#ipad-grey Text {
-fx-effect: dropshadow( one-pass-box , white , 0, 0.0 , 0 , 1 );
}
#lion-default {
-fx-background-color:
rgba(0,0,0,0.08),
linear-gradient(#5a61af, #51536d),
linear-gradient(#e4fbff 0%,#cee6fb 10%, #a5d3fb 50%, #88c6fb 51%, #d5faff 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0 0 -1 0,0,1;
-fx-background-radius: 5,5,4;
-fx-padding: 3 30 3 30;
-fx-text-fill: #242d35;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
}
#lion {
-fx-background-color:
rgba(0,0,0,0.08),
linear-gradient(#9a9a9a, #909090),
linear-gradient(white 0%, #f3f3f3 50%, #ececec 51%, #f2f2f2 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0 0 -1 0,0,1;
-fx-background-radius: 5,5,4;
-fx-padding: 3 30 3 30;
-fx-text-fill: #242d35;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
}
#windows7-default {
-fx-background-color:
#3c7fb1,
linear-gradient(#fafdfe, #e8f5fc),
linear-gradient(#eaf6fd 0%, #d9f0fc 49%, #bee6fd 50%, #a7d9f5 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2;
-fx-background-radius: 3,2,1;
-fx-padding: 3 30 3 30;
-fx-text-fill: black;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
}
#windows7 {
-fx-background-color:
#707070,
linear-gradient(#fcfcfc, #f3f3f3),
linear-gradient(#f2f2f2 0%, #ebebeb 49%, #dddddd 50%, #cfcfcf 100%);
-fx-background-insets: 0,1,2;
-fx-background-radius: 3,2,1;
-fx-padding: 3 30 3 30;
-fx-text-fill: black;
-fx-font-size: 14px;
}
Jasper, excellent job!
Now do you have plans to offer full stylesheets to emulate the major native LAFs? I know that’s a bit more tricky because the LAFs are not completely static, have to pick up colors, font sizes and other details dynamically from the native theme… still, I wonder if JavaFX’s styling support would take care of 95% of the work and make native LAFs much easier to develop than Swing.
It should be quite possible to do a emulation of native look. There is still a good amount of work if you want it to read the native theme from the OS and turn that into CSS. We have not plans yet for doing this but there is nothing stopping anyone from implementing their own light weight version that just emulates a single native theme or if they really need it they could implement some code to read the native themes. This could be taken as a starting point from the Swing LAF code for Windows and Mac as it is all open source now.
Most application today are designed in a style that complements the native look but is not a pure copy of the native look. Eg Skype client or Chrome or iTunes etc.
JavaFX is great technology indeed. However as Steve Jobs teached us, small things are very important for the make or break of a technology.
One such small thing for a cross platform GUI technology is the ability to emulate the native look and feel of the platform!
Many programmer are very bad in design and often even don’t realize it or simply do not have the time and a designer is much too expensive for small projects.
Therefore bad or alien looking applications will be the rule with JavaFX.
And this will give a bad taste to the whole technology. This taste in turn will prevent considering usage for many projects.
On the other hand, if you add a native look, many projects will simply pick this up and have a good looking not alien application, using the correct fonts of the user and so on…
Many clients require this for their application! Especially the Mac crowd.
So it is not possible to stress in the few words of such a comment how important it is that you add native looking CSS for the platforms and take this very serious for the JavaFX technology.
Hi Jasper,
How does the styling take affect, when the component dynamically changes its size (either due to Layout or Font change etc..).
Regards,
PavanKumar s
It is all dynamic and vector based. If your CSS rules use em’s instead of px, then it will scale according to the font size.
As Richard said everything done in this sample is vector based so it will scale when the size of the button changes. The size of the preferred size of the button is determined by the size of the Text and Icon + the padding. So if the text content or font gets bigger or smaller the preferred size will change. It is up to the layout container to listen for that change and resize the actual button control. The layout container may make the button larger or smaller than its preferred size depending on the layout rules. Once the button has been given a size by the layout container then the backgrounds and borders described in CSS are drawn.
Hi Jasper,
thanks for your excellent example.
Wooow ! that’s really amazing ! I’m going to buy a secondary harddisk today and install windows 7 to work with javaFX, as my primary plaform is Ubuntu Linux !! I will have to wait a year..
Thanks to all javafx team !!!!!
Thanks, this is great!
Since JavaFX 1.0 I’ve been looking into ways of using JavaFX for rendering a musical score. Now, JavaFX 2 is here and things do look better. Due to technical difficulties with the JavaFX platform before the new JavaFX 2 framework came out I solved my issues by not using JavaFX or nodes.
What I’d like to do is take another look at how JavaFX might be able to handle my rendering requirements. The best way to do this will be to work with a JavaFX expert who I can share my requirements and current solution with and together we can come to a conclusion and solution. I’m just wondering if there is an opportunity to do this with someone?
Great work Jasper!
Cheers
Amazing work! Now, all I’d like is to have sub-pixel AA on the text of those buttons, and it’ll look as close to native as one could wish for!
LCD AA for text is well underway and will be in a future release, you can track progress in JIRA.
Excellent! is it possible to animate buttons gradients using CSS such as onMouseOver to change color
Implicit Animations / CSS3 Transitions is something I’d also be very interested about. Is this already possible with JavaFX 2.0?
It would be awesome to be able to do this in the design domain, not having to trigger animations in event handlers.
Styling FX Buttons with CSS // JavaFX News, Demos and Insight // FX Experience…
Thank you for submitting this cool story – Trackback from JavaPins…
[...] at the FX Experience blog, Jasper Potts blogged about styling JavaFX Buttons with CSS, where he demonstrated the power of CSS in [...]
In our product we need to provide our custom “look”. This means that we need to replace caspian.css to our own scc file for whole applications. I don’t want to force developers to apply css to each Scene that they will create.
I want something similar to Swing’s look&feell – load on startup and apply by default to every created component – is it possible?
Not currently.
Hi jasper ,
I would like to know what is the use of background-radius I cant see this attribute in css2 and css3. :-/
Thanks,
Narayan
We are a little more flexible than the CSS 3 standard. We support multiple layers of backgrounds and borders on a single Node. So the background-radius property applies to the backgrounds. For example if you have:
-fx-background-color: red, blue;
That defines two backgrounds a red one with a blue one over the top. Then if you add:
-fx-background-radius: 3, 30;
The red background will have a corner radius of 3 pixels and the blue will had a corner radius of 30. If you had
-fx-background-radius: 10;
Then that will be applied to all the backgrounds.
HTML CSS has border-radius which also applies to the background but there is no way to separate them. What we do gives you a lot more flexibility to create complex graphics with a single Node and without using images. With web CSS you would have to nest DIVs or use Images to create the same effect.
It looks great!
Could you please create css skins for Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion? This is a big missing point for JavaFX 2 currently…