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Johnathan describes the level of detail us UI developers go to in the never ending quest to make things perfect.

Pixel Pushing
Building a graphical interface is hyper-detailed, laborious work. A server-side or non-graphical component can usually get by fixing an interface that needs a little reworking "in the next release." Graphical interfaces simply don't have that option. This is because any detail left unattended is displayed in plain sight to the users of our applications. Adjacent borders, buttons and text have to line up to the pixel--otherwise, the interface simply looks sloppy. And we, as graphical interface developers, need to strive to make interfaces that don't look sloppy.

With that in mind, we are going to focus on the nitty-gritty, pixel-level details of a graphical interface. In this article, we'll copy a native operating system icon in Java code and explore some tools and process that can help you get used to working in the pixel-pushing world.