Java GUI technologies

The name Java Foundation Classes (JFC) may be a source of much confusion. It implies the classes that are at the foundation of Java, while, in fact, JFC includes only classes and interfaces related to the GUI. To be precise, JFC is a collection of three frameworks: the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), Swing, and Java 2D.

JFC is part of Java Class Library (JCL), although the name JFC came into being only in 1997, while AWT was part of JCL from the very beginning. At that time, Netscape developed a GUI library called Internet Foundation Classes (IFC), and Microsoft created Application Foundation Classes (AFC) for GUI development, too. So, when Sun Microsystems and Netscape decided to form a new GUI library, they inherited the word Foundation and created JFC. The Swing framework took over the Java GUI programming from AWT and was successfully used for almost two decades.

A new GUI programming toolkit, JavaFX, was added to JCL in Java 8. It was removed from...