Swing versus SWT

Question

What should I be looking at when choosing between SWT and Swing?

I've had a little experience with both, but I'm interested in:

• layouts/layout managers;
• data binding;
• pre-built controls;
• ease of development.

I will assume that they are both satisfactory in terms of GUI performance and of platform availability.

Answer 1

It can be hard to get the layuots exact the way you want in SWT, it's usually easier in Swing. In SWT you also need to pass in the parent component in the constructor when you create a child component. This can make it a little bit tricker if you want to create a gui that changes dynamically. Otherwise, SWT is very easy to work with.