Section 17.5. Review

17.5. Review

Compared to Swing, SWT is a somewhat simpler GUI library. Unlike Swing, it is Free Software and Open Source. It provides a full GUI library for use with gcj. It is part of the Eclipse project. It uses native methods that require calls to dispose of allocated objects. It has a rigid hierarchy that requires that lower level GUI components be linked to their parents when they are constructed. This means there are some limitations on how applications may be constructed. SWT is much less commonly used than Swing. Swing is the lingua franca of Java GUIs. SWT is definitely worth knowing, but if you want your skills to be marketable, it is probably best to start with Swing.