Chapter 15. Swing Basics

There are two technologies you use when developing desktop user-interface: the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Swing. You may have heard that the AWT is an old technology—having been in existence since Java 1.0—that has been replaced by Swing. It is true, but it’s not time yet to toss the AWT because it’s still useful.

Swing is preferred because it has a better collection of ready-to-use components. Swing components are also much more powerful than their AWT counterparts. For one, some Swing components can render HTML tags, something AWT developers would not even dare to dream about. Nonetheless, the AWT is still relevant because Swing relies on the AWT event handling mechanism and layout managers as well as its various classes; therefore you still need to know about those classes. Moreover, when developing applets (See Chapter 20, “Applets”), your knowledge of AWT will be very helpful too.