The Origins and Design Philosophy of Swing
Swing did not exist in the early days of Java. Rather, it was a response to deficiencies present in Java’s original GUI subsystem: the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT). The AWT defines a basic set of components that support a usable, but limited, graphical interface. One reason for the limited nature of the AWT is that it translates its various visual components into their corresponding, platform-specific equivalents, or peers. This means that the look and feel of an AWT component is defined by the platform, not by Java. Because the AWT components use native code resources, they are referred to as heavyweight.
The use of native peers led to several problems. First, because of differences between operating ...
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