3
Swing vs. AWT
So why do the GUI component classes have a prefix J? Instead of
JButton, why not name it simply Button? In fact, there is a class
already named Button in the java.awt package.
When Java was introduced, the GUI classes were bundled in a
library known as the Abstract Windows Toolkit (AWT).
With the release of Java 2, the AWT user-interface components were
replaced by a more robust, versatile, and flexible library known as
Swing components.
Swing components are less dependent on the target platform and use
less of the native GUI resource.
For this reason, Swing components that don’t rely on native GUI are
referred to as lightweight components, and AWT components are
referred to as heavyweight components.
