title: How can I create a "modern looking" Java desktop application?
body: <p>Similar questions to this are asked periodically, but many of these answers are outdated.</p>
  
  <p>I need to build a cross-platform desktop application in Java with a GUI of comparable quality to contemporary desktop apps.</p>
  
  <p>Swing is the default choice, but I have yet to encounter a Swing application that didn't look, at the very least, quite dated and clunky (subjective, I know, but with GUIs it's hard to avoid aesthetic judgements).</p>
  
  <p>I notice that the new Bitcoin client now uses QT with Java bindings, and does have an attractive user interface, but this has the disadvantage that it is no-longer pure Java.</p>
  
  <p>So much of what I find when I search for Swing-related libraries is 5 years old or older, even though the aesthetics of desktop applications have evolved significantly since then.</p>
  
  <p>If you needed to build a Java desktop application from scratch, what would you use for its GUI?</p>