Archive for May, 2007
SWT versus Swing
21 May 2007 <Many Java developers fear to adopt a solution based on SWT, because of the possibility of losing the portability of Java applications and because of the necessity of generating different installations for each client platform.
Swing is only available in platforms that support J2SE, Windows systems (except CE), Unix (including Linux) and Mac OS. SWT is available in the same platforms, which is facilitated by its nature of free software. But SWT goes further, supporting Windows CE / Pocket PC with J2ME systems. In fact, it’s even easier to get an updated version of SWT than an updated Swing version, because in many platforms J2SE was not updated since version 1.3.0.
Another advantage of SWT is that Swing manages allocation and releasing of native resources in a transparent but inefficient way. SWT waits the application to do this management. The greater control and efficiency of manual releasing makes SWT lighter than Swing, especially in applications that run for a long period of time.