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AWT Enhancements

The AWT has changed in three ways:

The architecture has been improved to make large-scale GUI development more feasible and add to basic functionality that was missing.

Architectural support has been added for event handling by non-components ("delegation"), data transfer (such as cut-copy-paste), desktop color schemes (to improve consistency of appearance), printing, mouseless operation, component-specific cursors, and lightweight components.

Method names, arguments, and functionality have been made consistent.

These changes make it possible for programs such as GUI builders to query components to determine the components' properties. They also make it easier for programmers to learn and use the AWT API.

Overall quality improvements have been made and new features added.

For example, image and graphics functionality has improved, with font support made more flexible to accommodate internationalization. The new PopupMenu class makes it possible to have a menu that is not attached to a menu bar. The new ScrollPane class makes implementing scrolling areas easy, as well as increasing the speed of scrolling.

Where to Find Documentation

• Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing describes the new AWT event architecture and other commonly used 1.1 features. It also describes how the new JDK 1.1 GUI-related classes work. The trail includes a detailed lesson on using the new event system and on using the Swing lightweight components.

• For details on exact enhancements made, see the AWT Enhancements Design Specification .

• Read about the changes planned for GUI APIs for the next major release of the JDK: Java Foundation Classes.

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