Info Tech Guide

Swing is the primary Java GUI widget toolkit. It is part of Sun Microsystems’ Java Foundation Classes (JFC) — an API for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs.

Swing was developed to provide a more sophisticated set of GUI components than the earlier Abstract Window Toolkit. Swing provides a native look and feel that emulates the look and feel of several platforms, and also supports a pluggable look and feel that allows applications to have a look and feel unrelated to the underlying platform. It has more powerful and flexible components than AWT. In addition to familiar components such as buttons, check box and labels, Swing provides several advanced components such as tabbed panel, scroll panes, trees, tables and lists.

Unlike AWT components, Swing components are not implemented by platform-specific code. Instead they are written entirely in Java and therefore are platform-independent. The term “lightweight” is used to describe such an element.