How to set the button color of a JButton (not background color)

Question

I have a JButton that I would like to change the background color of to white. When using the Metal Look And Feel, I achieve the desired effect with setBackground:

Unfortunately, the concept of "background color" is different when using the Windows LAF; the background color is the color drawn around the button:

I would like to use the Windows LAF, but allow the button color of this JButton to be changed to white. How do I do this?

Answer 1

You'll have to decide if it's worth the effort, but you can always create youe own ButtonUI, as shown in this example due to @mKorbel.

Answer 2

I use JDK 6 on XP. It looks like the Window UI doesn't follow the normal painting rules in more ways than 1. As you noticed setBackground() doesn't work. You should be able to do custom painting by telling the component not to fill in the content area:

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class ButtonBackground extends JFrame
{
    public ButtonBackground()
    {
        setLayout( new FlowLayout() );

        JButton normal = new JButton("Normal");
        add(normal);

        JButton test1 = new JButton("Test 1")
        {
            @Override
            public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
            {
                g.setColor( Color.GREEN );
                g.fillRect(0, 0, getSize().width, getSize().height);
                super.paintComponent(g);
            }
        };
        test1.setContentAreaFilled(false);
        add(test1);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
//          UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel");
        }
        catch (Exception e2) {}

        ButtonBackground frame = new ButtonBackground();
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( EXIT_ON_CLOSE );
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}

When you run the code as is it seems to work properly. That is when you click on the button you see the Border change. However is you run with the Windows XP LAF, the Border never changes to you don't see the button click effect.

Therefore, I guess the issue is with the WindowUI and you would need to customize the UI which is probably too complex to do so I don't have a solution.