Andrew Binstock: The Java GUI Toolkit Flatline
November 15, 2007 —
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We are seeing the transformation of the client into an incredibly rich personal experience.
AJAX, RIA and other Web 2.0 technologies are driving new paradigms in the browser, while Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is similarly improving desktop GUI experiences on Wintel systems. One technology that has not participated in this revolution is Java. In fact, it’s hard to recall any major stories regarding Java’s built-in Swing toolkit or IBM’s competing Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). I find this curious, because we all remember how just a few years ago the rivalry between these two camps was intense. Since then, the smoke has cleared, and we see that the fires of innovation in both camps are on a very low flame.
Swing, as most of you will recall, came out in 1998 with much fanfare as part of the Java 1.2 release. Its claim was remarkable breadth of functionality and a nearly infinite configurability. Any interface need of that period—no matter how complex—could be done in Swing. And because Swing was skinnable, it could be made to approximate the look and feel of Windows, Motif and other interfaces. But Swing had drawbacks: At the time it was slow and its emulation of native widgets and controls was far from faithful. Moreover, Swing was difficult to program.
In response, IBM developed SWT. The defining aspects of SWT were the use of native widgets and simplicity of programming. In exchange, it gave up the full complement of functionality that Swing offered. Because the primary use case for SWT was the Eclipse IDE, the features left behind (such as truly rich text) were not likely to be terribly missed.
When SWT came out, it was indeed faster than Swing, and it used native widgets. Shortly, the JFace library appeared, which expanded SWT’s power by providing higher-level constructs, while still allowing direct access to the lower-level controls.
Since then, though, progress has consisted primarily of refining the underlying technology rather than advancing it, and porting to new platforms. Swing, for example, now runs very fast and has an interface that is faithful to underlying look and feel. If today’s Swing had been available when IBM began getting serious about Eclipse, I doubt SWT would have been funded or needed.
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