Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
Later technologies were introduced to help people use the Swing components within a browser and
with web-based application delivery. These include the Java Plug-in (
http://java.sun.com/products/
plugin/
) and Java Web Start (
http://java.sun.com/products/javawebstart/
). Alternatives to
Swing, like the SWT component set with Eclipse (
http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
), have also been
created. These are not discussed here.
■
This chapter will familiarize you with the various Swing pieces. For starters, there is the
component set. Without these, there is no Swing. Next, you'll peek at the world of event handling
and layout management common to both AWT and Swing components. After that, you'll take
a quick look at the undo/redo framework available within the Swing architecture. Then you'll
explore the SwingSet2 demonstration provided with the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0
Development Kit (JDK 5.0) so that you can see some of the capabilities. Lastly, I'll point out
where in the topic all these capabilities are discussed in detail.
Getting to Know the Swing Components
The topic will serve as a guide to development using the Swing component set. Over the course
of its pages, you'll look at every package in the
javax.swing
package hierarchy, as shown in
Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1.
The Swing package hierarchy
■
Note
The
javax.swing.plaf
package contains several subpackages and related packages, some of
which are located outside the
javax.swing
package hierarchy.
Plaf
stands for pluggable look and feel—
a Swing concept that will be described more fully in Chapter 20.
