Explain the difference between AWT and SWT.

Answer

• Abstract Windows Toolkit (AWT) is the original Java GUI tool kit.
• AWT's comes standard with every version of Java technology.
• It is very stable.
• It doesn’t need to be installed.
• AWT is a very simple tool kit with limited GUI components, layout managers, and events.
• Lowest-common denominator (LCD) approach is used for for AWT.
• Some commonly used components like Tables, Trees, Progress Bars, and others, are not supported.
• Applications that need more component types need to be created from scratch.
• SWT is based on a peer implementation.
• It has an adequate set of controls to make most applications on a host-by-host basis, creating emulated controls for any not supplied by the particular host. Thus, it overcomes the LCD problem faced by AWT.
• In SWT, the peers are just wrappers on host controls.
• In AWT, peers can provide services to minimize the differences between hosts.
• SWT is a good enough portable solution but not as well as Swing.