Can someone please recommend an alternative to Java swing?

java swing gui-toolkit
james picture james · Dec 16, 2010 · Viewed 14.7k times · Source

I have been mucking about with Java swing lately but it's butt ugly! Are most people who write Java GUI's using swing or something else? I would really appreciate a recommendation. I don't want to use a GUI builder because I need to learn how everything works first.

Thanks!

Answer

Olivier Croisier picture Olivier Croisier · Dec 16, 2010

If you don't like the default Swing look'n'feel, you can change it ; many ready-built themes exist. And it is quite possible to build beautiful and ergonomic applications with Swing : take a look at Netbeans or IntelliJ.

But if you definitely want to use another graphic toolkit, you can try SWT. Contrary to Swing that is pure Java, SWT uses native controls as much as possible (those provided by your OS), and emulates the missing ones. It was developed for, and is used by, the Eclipse platform.

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