Java Desktop application SWT vs Swing

Question

I m a web developer at day and thinking about building my first real desktop application  The idea is to build a tool that automates a very repetitive task in a web application where no API is available   I know I want to use Java  I used it before for web stuff  know the syntax pretty well  and want the application to be cross plattform as easy as possible    Where I m not so sure is if I should use SWT or Swing  As my main audience uses Windows  I want to look it as native as possible there  Linux and Mac should work  but the looks are not so important here   So what are the arguments for and against each UI Framework  Swing or SWT   Thanks   PS  I develop on Windows using Eclipse  But was thinking about playing with Netbeans

User · Accepted Answer

Pros Swing    part of java library  no need for additional native libraries works the same way on all platforms Integrated GUI Editor in Netbeans and Eclipse good online tutorials by Sun Oracle Supported by official java extensions  like java OpenGL    Cons Swing    Native look and feel may behave  different from the real native system  heavy components  native awt  hide swing components  not a problem most of the time as as use of heavy components is rather rare   Pros SWT    uses native elements when possible  so always native behavior supported by eclipse  gui editor VEP  VEP also supports Swing and AWT  large number of examples online has an integrated awt swt bridge to allow use of awt and swing components    Cons SWT    requires native libraries for each supported system may not support every behavior on all systems because of native resources used  hint options  managing native resources  while native components will often be disposed with their parent other resources such as Fonts have to be manually released or registered as dispose listener to a component for automatic release

User · Answer

I whould choose swing just because it s  native  for java   Plus  have a look at http   swingx java net

User · Answer

SWT was created as a response to the sluggishness of Swing around the turn of the century  Now that the differences in performance are becoming negligable  I think Swing is a better option for your standard applications  SWT Eclipse has a nice framework which helps with a lot of boiler plate code

User · Answer

I would use Swing for a couple of reasons    It has been around longer and has had more development effort applied to it  Hence it is likely more feature complete and  maybe  has fewer bugs  There is lots of documentation and other guidance on producing performant applications  It seems like changes to Swing propagate to all platforms simultaneously while changes to SWT seem to appear on Windows first  then Linux    If you want to build a very feature-rich application  you might want to check out the NetBeans RCP  Rich Client Platform   There s a learning curve  but you can put together nice applications quickly with a little practice  I don t have enough experience with the Eclipse platform to make a valid judgment   If you don t want to use the entire RCP  NetBeans also has many useful components that can be pulled out and used independently   One other word of advice  look into different layout managers  They tripped me up for a long time when I was learning  Some of the best aren t even in the standard library  The MigLayout  for both Swing and SWT  and JGoodies Forms tools are two of the best in my opinion

User · Answer

If you plan to build a full functional applications with more than a handful of features  I will suggest to jump right to using Eclipse RCP as the framework   If your application won t grow too big or your requirements are just too unique to be handled by a normal business framework  you can safely jump with Swing   At the end of the day  I d suggest you to try both technologies to find the one suit you better  Like Netbeans vs Eclipse vs IntelliJ  there is no the absolute correct answer here and both frameworks have their own drawbacks   Pro Swing    more experts more Java-like  almost no public field  no need to dispose on resource    Pro SWT    more OS native faster

User · Answer

pro swing    The biggest advantage of swing IMHO is that you do not need to ship the libraries with you application  which avoids dozen of MB       Native look and feel is much better for swing than in the early years performance is comparable to swt  swing is not slow    NetBeans offers Matisse as a comfortable component builder   The integration of Swing components within JavaFX is easier    But at the bottom line I wouldn t suggest to use  pure  swing or swt  -  There are several application frameworks for swing swt out  Look here  The biggest players are netbeans  swing  and eclipse  swt   Another nice framework could be griffon and a nice  set of components  is pivot  swing   Griffon is very interesting because it integrates a lot of libraries and not only swing  also pivot  swt  etc

User · Answer

One thing to consider  Screenreaders  For some reasons  some Swing components do not work well when using a screenreader  and the Java AccessBridge for Windows   Know that different screenreaders result in different behaviour  And in my experience the SWT-Tree performs a lot better than the Swing-Tree in combination with a screenreader  Thus our application ended up in using both SWT and Swing components   For distributing and loading the proper SWT-library  you might find this link usefull  http   www chrisnewland com select-correct-swt-jar-for-your-os-and-jvm-at-runtime-191

User · Answer

An important thing to consider is that some users and some resellers  Dell  install a 64 bit VM on their 64 bit Windows  and you can t use the same SWT library on 32 bit and 64 bit VMs   This means you will need to distribute and test different packages depending on whether users have 32-bit or a 64-bit Java VM  See this problem with Azureus  for instance  but you also have it with Eclipse  where as of today the builds on the front download page do not run on a 64 bit VM

User · Answer

Interesting question  I don t know SWT too well to brag about it  unlike Swing and AWT  but here s the comparison done on SWT Swing AWT   http   www developer com java other article php 10936 2179061 2 Swing-and-SWT-A-Tale-of-Two-Java-GUI-Libraries htm  And here s the site where you can get tutorial on basically anything on SWT  http   www java2s com Tutorial Java 0280  SWT Catalog0280  SWT htm   Hope you make a right decision  if there are right decisions in coding      -

User · Answer

For your requirements it sounds like the bottom line will be to use Swing since it is slightly easier to get started with and not as tightly integrated to the native platform as SWT   Swing usually is a safe bet

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