A "look and feel" is not a replacement for a native UI

In Netbeans does SWT!, Danno Ferrin says:

Ray mentioned that he didn't like the "swingy" look of NetBeans, and this does a good job of getting rid of it.

Please, look two seconds the screenshot... look the screenshot on that page. It's striking yes. JGoodies tried to mimic SWT in its Fakeclipse. Sadly, the fake interface is slower on resizing than Eclipse with a project loaded. Comparing with Eclipse, what makes Fakeclipse strange (Standard UI)?

  • Scrollbars colors are different
  • Popup menus are not exactly at the same location
  • The movable toolbar is weird
  • Disabled menu items are incorrectly rendered

Those four things make the application feel very different. The Elegant UI helps a lot with the scrollbars and the popup menu placement, but it loses the correct border when a menu item is pushed.

You will obviously notice something, and you'll know it's not the native look and feel. Same for Mozilla, same for Swing, whatever the plaf you plug into it.