AWT & Swing Tutorial

What is AWT? The Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) is Java's original GUI library. It provides windows, buttons, text fields, menus and event handling in a platform-independent way. ...

Creating a Frame A Frame is a top-level window with a title bar and resize borders. Subclass it and add components in the constructor: Closing the Window Properly By default ...

How Layout Managers Work A layout manager positions and resizes components inside a container automatically, so the GUI survives window resizing. Set one with setLayout(manager) . ...

Basic Controls AWT ships practical input controls that all extend Component: Label - static text. TextField - one-line input. Button - clickable action. Checkbox and CheckboxGroup ...

The Delegation Model AWT uses the delegation event model: a component fires events and registered listeners react. Register a listener with addXxxListener(...) . Button Action ...

The Graphics Context Every paint operation goes through the abstract Graphics class. Override paint(Graphics g) and use its drawing methods to draw on a component such as a Canvas ...

Menus Menus need a MenuBar attached to the Frame, containing Menu objects with MenuItem s: Menus can nest (sub-menus) and items fire ActionEvent just like buttons. File and Print ...

A Login Form Put labels, text fields and a button into a panel. Register an ActionListener that checks the credentials: Tic-Tac-Toe Game A 3x3 GridLayout of buttons toggling X and ...

What is Swing? Swing is the successor to AWT. All components are lightweight : they are drawn by Java itself, not the native widget toolkit, so they look identical on every ...

The Component Set Swing covers everything AWT does and much more, all in javax.swing : JButton , JLabel - basic output and actions. JTextField , JTextArea - input. JPanel - ...

JSlider A slider picks a value from a range. Listen to its change events to react: JProgressBar Displays task progress. Set the value between its minimum and maximum: JScrollPane ...

JPasswordField Hides typed characters (default echo is a dot): JOptionPane Dialogs Standard message, confirm and input dialogs in one call: JColorChooser Pick colors with a ...

JMenuBar Swing menus are built like AWT but into a JMenuBar: JToggleButton A button that stays pressed until clicked again - good for tool toggles: Popup Menus (Right-Click) ...

JFileChooser JFileChooser is the Swing way to pick files, fully drawn by Java: JFileChooser Filters Limit the shown files with a FileNameExtensionFilter: Icons ImageIcon loads ...

Pluggable Layouts Swing reuses the AWT layout managers (FlowLayout, BorderLayout, GridBagLayout) plus a few extensions. Here are common patterns with visual results. Form With ...