Tutorial on Creating Graphical User Interfaces with Swing and AWT
Graphical User Interface, in short GUI is developed using java programming language's toolkits Swing and AWT. AWT also stands for Abstract Windowing Toolkit.
When Java programming language evolved during the year 1994 - 95, during it's first version, AWT toolkit was introduced. AWT uses OS graphics which breaks the Java law. i.e Java programming language is platform independent.
Platform independence means, write once and run anywhere.
AWT toolkit, uses operating system resources. Hence, using AWT library is heavy, that means, using it takes maximum computers processing and computation time and slows down the computers performance.
And also, there are very limited widgets or components available. Since the native OS also provides limited widgets for Java programming language to use.
To overcome these all issues, the Java team has invented a toolkit or library called, Swing. Swing is included in JFC, which stands for Java Foundation Classes.
Swing is developed using 100 percent java code and does not depend on native OS's resources at all.
Graphics developed with Swing are very quick in response time and has elegant look. And also, Look and Feel is customizable according to the need.
I write about Look and Feel, also called as PLAF [Pluggable Look And Feel] in Swing terminology, in near future.
I also write about Swing containers and components, How actually components and containers can be created by following best coding practices and adding and changing the components' default properties etc. in coming articles.
One of the best usecases of using Swing library is, Netbeans IDE. Netbeans is industry endorsed for developing desktop application using AWT and Swing toolkits from Java programming language.
You can download Netbeans IDE from here:
Apache NetBeans Releases
To begin, learning Swing toolkit is installing Netbeans and writing Swing code using Netbeans.
That is all for now. Happy coding :)
