Swing (Java) - Definition and Overview

Swing is a graphics library for Java. Swing is one part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC). Swing includes graphical user interface (GUI) widgets such as text boxes, buttons, split-panes, and tables. The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is probably the graphics library that is most similar to Swing. Swing is originally from Sun Microsystems. SWT is originally from IBM.

History

The Internet Foundation Classes (IFC) were a graphics library for the Java programming language originally developed by Netscape Communications Corporation and first released on December 16 1996.

User interface components in AWT, the basic graphics library provided with the Java platform, were rendered and controlled by native peer components specific to each operating system. By contrast, components in IFC were rendered and controlled directly by platform independent Java code. These components are often described as lightweight because they do not require allocation of native resources in the operating system's windowing toolkit.

On April 2 1997, Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications Corporation announced their intention to combine IFC with other technologies to form the Java Foundation Classes. In addition to the lightweight components originally provided by IFC, Swing introduced a mechanism that allowed the look and feel of every component in an application to be altered without making substantial changes to the application code. The introduction of support for a pluggable look and feel allowed Swing components to emulate the appearance of native components while still retaining the benefits of platform independence.

See also

• JellySwing
• wxWidgets

References

• Matthew Robinson: Swing, Manning, ISBN 1-930110-88-X

External links

• The Swing Tutorial (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/index.html)