Java GUI frameworks What to choose Swing SWT AWT SwingX JGoodies JavaFX Apache Pivot

Question

There is quite a lot of gui frameworks out there for java  but what is recognized as today s framework of choice   The following is my understanding of the different frameworks  please correct me if im wrong  This is a very loosely defined set of questions  but i still think its valuable for anyone thinking of creating rich gui applications     AWT  Is the very foundation of swing  it performs well but is lacking in advanced components  If you intend to create rich applications  AWT is probably not the way to go  However for smaller gui applications that doesn t require rich user interfaces  This might suit perfectly as it s a tried and proven framework      Swing  Based on AWT as previously stated  In its infancy it was regarded as slow and buggy and caused IBM to create SWT for Eclipse  However with Java 5  or 6   Swing became the framework of choice for building new applications  Swing has a lot of rich components but are still lacking in some areas  One example being that there isn t a full featured TreeTable component which can do sorting and filtering searching     SWT  Created by IBM for Eclipse  they seemed to think that Swing was not suited for Eclipse at the time  By itself is pretty low-level  and it uses the platform s native widgets through JNI  It is not related to Swing and AWT at all  Their API is however somewhat clunky and not intuitive  They do have some advanced component s like a TreeTable   but i don t think they support sorting and filtering out of the box   SWT uses some native bindings  through JNI   and the rant on the internet is that this framework should not be used in today s projects   why not      SwingX  Based on Swing and it s mission is to create rich components for swing  Still under development   not very active though   Have a very nice set of components  like for example TreeTable  But the TreeTable does not support filtering and sorting as far as i know  It does however support searching with highlighting      Note that SwingX is components  AFAIU  that are extensions or   compositions of existing Swing components     JGoodies  A framework which i know nothing about    What is it s strengths and weaknesses  What set s Jgoodies apart from the rest      JGoodies OTOH is about PLAFs and layouts      JavaFX  The latest flagship of Java Oracle  promising to be the facto standard in developing rich desktop or web applications      Apache Pivot  It renders UI using Java2D  thus minimizing the impact of  IMO  bloated  legacies of Swing and AWT    Augustus Thoo   It s main focus seems to be on RIA  Rich internet applications   but it seems it can also be applied to desktop applications  And as a personal comment  Looks very interesting  I Especially like that it s an apache project   https   cwiki apache org PIVOT frequently-asked-questions-faq html    Qt Jambi  A java wrapper to the native qt library which is written in c c    Very powerful  widely used and accepted  Has a lot of GUI components and a easy to use API   http   qt-jambi org     So  to try to summarize a bit of what im asking   Say i wanted to create a desktop application today in Java which involves a lot of advanced components  what should i choose  And why   Which one of these frameworks should be recognized as deprecated and which should be recognized as the frameworks of the distant future   What is todays de-facto-standard framework and which tools do you utilize to create java gui applications     I might regret asking this  but ill try it anyways   C   Net is said to have a very good set of easy to use components which can be flexed in every direction possible  And after investigating different java frameworks to some extent i can t seem to say the same about Java  Why is this  Why doesn t java  which is the most widely used programming language in the world  have the same set of GUI components    Is it just that java has based their gui components at a much lower level  and it is possible to write all these advanced components that im looking for  but you have to do much if not all of the work yourself

User · Answer

SWT by itself is pretty low-level  and it uses the platform s native widgets through JNI  It is not related to Swing and AWT at all  The Eclipse IDE and all Eclipse-based Rich Client Applications  like the Vuze BitTorrent client  are built using SWT  Also  if you are developing Eclipse plugins  you will typically use SWT  I have been developing Eclipse-based applications and plugins for almost 5 years now  so I m clearly biased  However  I also have extensive experience in working with SWT and the JFace UI toolkit  which is built on top of it  I have found JFace to be very rich and powerful  in some cases it might even be the main reason for choosing SWT  It enables you to whip up a working UI quite quickly  as long as it is IDE-like  with tables  trees  native controls  etc   Of course you can integrate your custom controls as well  but that takes some extra effort

User · Answer

I ve been quite happy with Swing for the desktop applications I ve been involved in  However  I do share your view on Swing not offering advanced components  What I ve done in these cases is to go for JIDE  It s not free  but not that pricey either and it gives you a whole lot more tools under your belt  Specifically  they do offer a filterable TreeTable

User · Answer

Swing   SwingX   Miglayout is my combination of choice  Miglayout is so much simpler than Swings perceived 200 different layout managers and much more powerful  Also  it provides you with the ability to  debug  your layouts  which is especially handy when creating complex layouts

User · Answer

you forgot for Java Desktop Aplication based on JSR296 as built-in Swing Framework in NetBeans  excluding AWT and JavaFX are all of your desribed frameworks are based on Swing  if you ll start with Swing then you d be understand  clearly  for all these Swing s  Based Frameworks   ATW  SWT  Eclipse   Java Desktop Aplication Netbeans   SwingX  JGoodies  all there frameworks  I don t know something more about JGoodies  incl  JavaFX haven t long time any progress  lots of Swing s Based Frameworks are stoped  if not then without newest version  just my view - best of them is SwingX  but required deepest knowledge about Swing   Look and Feel for Swing s Based Frameworks

User · Answer

Another option is to use Qt Jambi  It has nearly all the greatness of Qt  many components  good documentation  easy to use   without the hassle of C    I used it 3-4 years ago for a small project  even then it was almost mature   You might want to see the discussion about Swing vs  Qt here

User · Answer

I would go with Swing  For layout I would use JGoodies form layout  Its worth studying the white paper on the Form Layout here - http   www jgoodies com freeware forms   Also if you are going to start developing a huge desktop application  you will definitely need a framework  Others have pointed out the netbeans framework  I didnt like it much so wrote a new one that we now use in my company  I have put it onto sourceforge  but didnt find the time to document it much  Here s the link to browse the code   http   swingobj svn sourceforge net viewvc swingobj   The showcase should show you how to do a simple logon actually     Let me know if you have any questions on it I could help

User · Answer

My personal opinion  Go for Swing together with the NetBeans platform    If you need advanced components  more than NetBeans offers  you can easily integrate SwingX without problems  or JGoodies  as the NetBeans platform is completely based on Swing    I would not start a large desktop application  or one that is going to be large  without a good platform that is build upon the underlying UI framework    The other option is SWT together with the Eclipse RCP  but it s harder  though not impossible  to integrate  pure  Swing components into such an application    The learning curve is a bit steep for the NetBeans platform  although I guess that s true for Eclipse as well  but there are some good books around which I would highly recommend

User · Answer

I would like to suggest another framework  Apache Pivot http   pivot apache org    I tried it briefly and was impressed by what it can offer as an RIA  Rich Internet Application  framework ala Flash   It renders UI using Java2D  thus minimizing the impact of  IMO  bloated  legacies of Swing and AWT

User · Answer

Decision tree    Frameworks like Qt and SWT need native DLLs  So you have to ask yourself  Are all necessary platforms supported  Can you package the native DLLs with your app   See here  how to do this for SWT   If you have a choice here  you should prefer Qt over SWT  Qt has been developed by people who understand UI and the desktop while SWT has been developed out of necessity to make Eclipse faster  It s more a performance patch for Java 1 4 than a UI framework  Without JFace  you re missing many major UI components or very important features of UI components  like filtering on tables    If SWT is missing a feature that you need  the framework is somewhat hostile to extending it  For example  you can t extend any class in it  the classes aren t final  they just throw exceptions when the package of this getClass   isn t org eclipse swt and you can t add new classes in that package because it s signed   If you need a native  pure Java solution  that leaves you with the rest  Let s start with AWT  Swing  SwingX - the Swing way   AWT is outdated  Swing is outdated  maybe less so but not much work has been done on Swing for the past 10 years   You could argue that Swing was good to begin with but we all know that code rots  And that s especially true for UIs today   That leaves you with SwingX  After a longer period of slow progress  development has picked up again  The major drawback with Swing is that it hangs on to some old ideas which very kind of bleeding edge 15 years ago but which feel  clumsy  today  For example  the table views do support filtering and sorting but you still have to configure this  You ll have to write a lot of boiler plate code just to get a decent UI that feels modern   Another weak area is theming  As of today  there are a lot of themes around  See here for a top 10  But some are slow  some are buggy  some are incomplete  I hate it when I write a UI and users complain that something doesn t work for them because they selected an odd theme  JGoodies is another layer on top of Swing  like SwingX  It tries to make Swing more pleasant to use  The web site looks great  Let s have a look at the tutorial     hm     still searching     hang on  It seems that there is no documentation on the web site at all  Google to the rescue  Nope  no useful tutorials at all   I m not feeling confident with a UI framework that tries so hard to hide the documentation from potential new fans  That doesn t mean JGoodies is bad  I just couldn t find anything good to say about it but that it looks nice  JavaFX  Great  stylish  Support is there but I feel it s more of a shiny toy than a serious UI framework  This feeling roots in the lack of complex UI components like tree tables  There is a webkit-based component to display HTML   When it was introduced  my first thought was  five years too late   If your aim is a nice app for phones or web sites  good  If your aim is professional desktop application  make sure it delivers what you need  Pivot  First time I heard about it  It s basically a new UI framework based on Java2D  So I gave it a try yesterday  No Swing  just tiny bit of AWT  new Font         My first impression was a nice one  There is an extensive documentation that helps you getting started  Most of the examples come with live demos  Note  You must have Java enabled in your web browser  this is a security risk  in the web page  so you can see the code and the resulting application side by side   In my experience  more effort goes into code than into documentation  By looking at the Pivot docs  a lot of effort must have went into the code  Note that there is currently a bug which prevents some of the examples to work  PIVOT-858  in your browser   My second impression of Pivot is that it s easy to use  When I ran into a problem  I could usually solve it quickly by looking at an example  I m missing a reference of all the styles which each component supports  though   As with JavaFX  it s missing some higher level components like a tree table component  PIVOT-306   I didn t try lazy loading with the table view  My impression is that if the underlying model uses lazy loading  then that s enough   Promising  If you can  give it a try

[java] Java GUI frameworks. What to choose? Swing, SWT, AWT, SwingX, JGoodies, JavaFX, Apache Pivot?

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