The JavaTM Tutorial
Previous Page Lesson Contents Next Page Start of Tutorial > Start of Trail > Start of Lesson Search

Trail: Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing
Lesson: Converting to Swing

Why to Convert

The strongest reason to convert to Swing is because it offers many benefits to programmers and end users. Among them:

It's reasonable to put off converting if you don't think your users will be able run Swing programs conveniently. For example, if your program is an applet and you want anyone on the Internet to be able to use it, then you have to consider how many Web surfers have browsers that can run Swing programs. As of this writing, the major browsers don't have Swing support built in; the user must add it by downloading and installing Java Plug-in(outside of the tutorial) .

You have the choice of upgrading to Java 2 (JDK 1.2) when you convert to Swing. However, you don't need to decide right now whether to upgrade. Programs written with JDK 1.1 and Swing generally work just fine in Java 2. For information about new and improved features of Java 2, see Tables of JDK Features(in the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail).


Previous Page Lesson Contents Next Page Start of Tutorial > Start of Trail > Start of Lesson Search