It has been a while since the last UI refresh of MCreator, so it was about time to make one. We are presenting the new look and feel of MCreator, which is now flatter, more modern, accessible, and performant. Read on!
New look and feel
The new UI greatly improves compatibility with HiDPI screens (especially with screen scales such as 125% and 175%) and macOS/Apple Retina screens. The new window design merges the title bar and menu bar on Windows 10 and 11 for more usable space. New UI also supports SVG vector icons that scale in a non-pixelated way on higher pixel density screens and external theme plugins can use SVG icons if they want to. PNG is of course still supported icon format for custom themes.
The workspace selector has also been refreshed. The recent workspace panel now extends to the top of the screen. The new workspace dialog got some attention too, with a nicer header and some other details.
What are the changes?
With this UI refresh, we tried to keep the layout familiar, but improve it where needed. This means many panels and windows have been revisited and carefully modified, while keeping the know layout. Below you can see the updated look of the textures panel.
We have also focused on making sure the UI plays well in all areas when custom UI backgrounds are used, as one can see in the screenshot below.
We also made many changes under the hood that improved the performance of the rendering, the crispness of rendering of certain components, and the amount of resources needed to display a certain panel. This also includes font rendering that is now done with the method that is deemed the most optimal for the given device. MCreator will now also use native system fonts when available, matching other operating system components better.
Changes for theme makers
With a change of the underlying look and feel (Java LAF) to FlatLaf, many changes are there for the theme makers. While existing themes will still work with the new UI, there are many new options theme makers can now explore. We already mentioned that SVG icons can now be used for more crisp icons, but there is more.
Themes can now specify all properties of the FlatLaf such as border style, font sizes, component spacing, and more. This allows for customization beyond the current color scheme options present in the old system.
Themes can also import IntelliJ-based JSON themes and build upon that. Below, you can see the IntelliJ carbon theme being used within MCreator, implemented by a custom theme plugin containing the IntelliJ theme JSON file within the plugin.
What is your take?
What do you think about the theme update? Let us know in the comments below :) We are still polishing out the elements so you can expect the UI to change further in the full release compared to the screenshots above. We can't wait to see new theme plugins utilizing new theming features that will allow theme plugin makers to make very unique themes in the future!
Very nice! A quick question though. With the introduction of components how will the NBT blocks be handled? Will they be replaced or will they just be modified to work with components and in that case how will backwards compatibility work out?