Getting Started with Swing

This lesson gives you a quick introduction to using the the JFC Swing packages to create a program's GUI. First, it tells you what the JFC and Swing are. Next, it helps you get the necessary releases and use them to compile and run a Swing program. Then it shows you how to run applets. Finally, it takes you on a whirlwind tour of a simple Swing application.
If you aren't already comfortable with running and compiling a Java program, please go to the Getting Started trail. Return here when you've successfully compiled and run at least one JDK 1.1 or JDK 1.2 program.
About the JFC and Swing

This section gives you a little history about the JFC and Swing. If you've developed programs using AWT components, you'll probably be interested in the description of the differences between AWT and Swing components.

Compiling and Running Swing Programs

To write programs using the Swing components, you must first download the appropriate JDK and JFC releases. Then you can compile and run the small Swing application that we provide.

Running Swing Applets

If you're interested in writing Swing applets, then the first thing you need to do is to figure out how to run them.

A Quick Tour of a Swing Application's Code

This section takes you through the code for a small Swing application. You'll see the code that a Swing application absolutely must have, and you'll learn about some commonly used Swing features.

After you finish this quick start lesson, you can go to the Overview of Swing GUI Features lesson to learn all about the features that your Swing programs can use.

Getting Started with Swing