1. Main New Features

• Lightweight. Not built on native window-system windows.
• Much bigger set of built-in controls. Trees, image buttons, tabbed panes, sliders, toolbars, color choosers, tables, text areas to display HTML or RTF, etc.
• Much more customizable. Can change border, text alignment, or add image to almost any control. Can customize how minor features are drawn. Can separate internal representation from visual appearance.
• "Pluggable" look and feel. Can change look and feel at runtime, or design own look and feel.
• Many miscellaneous new features. Double-buffering built in, tool tips, dockable tool bars, keyboard accelerators, custom cursors, etc.

2. Swing is Standard in Java 2 (aka Java 1.2)

• Includes Java2D (see this tutorial).
• Adds support for MIDI, WAV, and other audio.

3. Separate Swing package can be added to Java 1.1.

• Does not include Java2D or new audio formats.
• Download it here.

4. Getting More Info.

5. Components are named JXxx.

6. There is an almost-equivalent Swing component for most AWT components.

7. Do drawing in paintComponent, not paint.

8. Instead of adding components directly to frames or applets, use the content pane

• Add to content pane via getContentPane().add
• Replace content pane via setContentPane

9. Model-View-Controller architecture lets you change the internal data representation for lists, trees, tables, etc.

10. Swing was in the com.sun.java.swing package in beta releases of 1.2. Switched to javax.swing in 1.2 final.

11. Default "look and feel" is a Java-specific one.

• Need special call to get native look
• Default called "Java look & feel" (formerly "Metal")

12. Mixing AWT and Swing is doomed.