AWT vs. Swing
AWT (Abstract Windowing Toolkit) was the original windowing toolkit shipped with Java.
AWT components were designed to take on the “look and feel” of the underlying window system in which they are displayed. For applets—wherever the browser is running.
With the advent of the Java 2 platform, AWT is gradually being replaced by Swing—part of JFC.
Swing components are designed to have a fixed “look and feel” on all platforms. They are less prone to windowing system dependency bugs.
The default “platform look and feel”, abbreviated plaf, is called Metal. Others available include Motif and Windows.
In this tutorial, where there is a choice, we will use Swing components in preference to AWT.