Animanted Menus, Buttons

Question

Unless I'm missing something it would be great to have sub-menus that fade or slide in and out, as well as fading rollovers on buttons and links. I know there are some tricky workarounds to create similar effects but as far as I can see there's no easy way. Little subtle touches like this much such a difference to the look and feel of a site.

Answer 1

Because my poor english I don't understand the appearence of your buttons. But you can change the appearance of the buttons by creating a new UI class. I've already done another ButtonUI class for our application. I copy hier, just to see an example without comments because of the language for the javadoc is not english. It follows the appearance of the Metal L&F, the flat style.
public class CoreButtonUI
extends BasicButtonUI
public CoreButtonUI() { }
private final static CoreButtonUI buttonUI = new CoreButtonUI();
private boolean defaults_initialized = false;
protected int dashedRectGapX;
protected int dashedRectGapY;
protected int dashedRectGapWidth;
protected int dashedRectGapHeight;
protected Color focusColor;
public static ComponentUI createUI(JComponent jcomponent)
return buttonUI;
public void installDefaults(AbstractButton button)
super.installDefaults(button);
if (!defaults_initialized)
String pp = getPropertyPrefix();
focusColor = UIManager.getColor(pp + "focus");
dashedRectGapX = UIManager.getInt(pp + "dashedRectGapX");
dashedRectGapY = UIManager.getInt(pp + "dashedRectGapY");
dashedRectGapWidth = UIManager.getInt(pp + "dashedRectGapWidth");
dashedRectGapHeight = UIManager.getInt(pp + "dashedRectGapHeight");
defaults_initialized = true;
public void uninstallDefaults(AbstractButton button)
super.uninstallDefaults(button);
defaults_initialized = false;
protected void paintButtonPressed(Graphics g, AbstractButton abstractbutton)
setTextShiftOffset();
protected void paintFocus(Graphics g, AbstractButton b, Rectangle viewRect, Rectangle textRect, Rectangle iconRect)
JButton button = (JButton)b;
int width = b.getWidth();
int height = b.getHeight();
if (!button.isRolloverEnabled())
g.setColor(focusColor);
BasicGraphicsUtils.drawDashedRect(g, dashedRectGapX, dashedRectGapY,
width - dashedRectGapWidth, height - dashedRectGapHeight);