I apologize. I expect this is the wrong forum to ask my question and
would appreciate a hint as to the appropriate forum to ask this
question in.

On the off chance that someone will answer, I will put my question
here as well.

I'm a student at university and we have to develop a GUI program with
NetBeans. I have managed to complete the layout of my frame and all
the components appear. However, the appearance is different depending
on how I display the frame. If, while in the IDE, I click on the
"Preview Design" icon, I see the frame rendered so that it looks
exactly like any other windows  window on my computer. If I choose to
Run the application, I get a clunky, less nice appearance of the
window.

Can anyone point me to what/where I need to change things so the run-
time window is as nice-looking as the design-time window?

Thanks.
Mike