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This section answers two questions:
- What are the JFC and Swing?
- JFC is short for JavaTM Foundation Classes, which encompass a group of features to help people build graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The JFC was first announced at the 1997 JavaOne developer conference and is defined as containing the following features (not a complete set):
- The Swing Components
- Include everything from buttons to split panes to tables. You can see mugshots of all the components in Visual Index to the Swing Components.
Pluggable Look and Feel Support- Gives any program that uses Swing components a choice of looks and feels. For example, the same program can use either the JavaTM look and feel or the Windows look and feel. We expect many more look-and-feel packages -- including some that use sound instead of a visual
look -- to become available from various sources.
Note: “Swing”; was the codename of the project that developed the new components. Although it's an unofficial name, it's frequently used to refer to the new components and related API. It's immortalized in the package names for the Swing API, which begin with javax.swing.
- Which Releases Contain the Swing API?
- The Swing API is available in two forms:
- As a core part of the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (including v 1.2 and
v 1.3)
- JFC 1.1 (for use with JDK 1.1)
We recommend that you use the latest version of the Java 2 Platform. However, you might need to use an earlier version if, for example, your software must run on platforms that don't yet support the latest version. It's a bit simpler to use the Java 2 Platform than JDK 1.1 because the JFC is built into the Java 2 Platform and you don't need to add libraries to be able to use the Swing API.
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