The visual height of JButtons and JTextFields is smaller in Merlin beta2 (b70) than in the pre-1.4 releases of the JDK. If there is any text displayed by the component, the gap between the component's bottom edge and the text base-line is noticably narrower than when the same app is run on JDK 1.3.x.

The difference can be easily compared by running the SwingSet2 demo on both JDK 1.3.x and Merlin at the same time.

The change may be a result of the L&F changes in Merlin, but it affects the NetBeans/Forte for Java IDE, which seem to be using smaller JButtons and JTextFields than recommended by the Java L&F guidelines. When running the IDE on merlin-beta2 the components are even smaller and the text displayed by the component appears to be too low.