How do "professionals" make a GUI in java?

Question

Thanks for your answers to my previous question about GUI in java. I now wonder what are the solutions chosen by professionals to get a nice GUI, for "real" applications. Do you use swing and JComponents and just change the "look and feel" ? Do you prefer awt or another library ?

Sorry if that question sounds weird, I'm a student and I don't really know how java is used in the real world...

Answer 1

In our company we use Swing, as that is supported by the JVM out of the box, but we do use color coded background colors for some panels and buttons.

If we'd use something different, like SWT or Jambi we'd also have to roll out those frameworks for all platforms, and test those frameworks for all OSses and (supported) java versions. Not nice at all.

It is however fairly tricky to create a nice responsive application with Swing; so you really need to use SwingWorker and the like. With a bit of experience however you can create a nice application that way.

And even if it isn't the fastest framework to develop in, development time is really small compared to defining the functional requirements of the user interface, and testing and support when the version is released.

That said, our target is desktops. If you target mobile devices or also need a web frontend your choices may vary.

Answer 2

I don't believe anyone prefers AWT anymore. Swing supplanted it entirely eleven years ago, building on top of it to correct flaws in the AWT 1.0 design.

Swing isn't the only way that professionals make Java UIs. That works for desktops, but there's also JavaFX now. For the web, UIs are built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JSPs.