peer : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
Go to : punctuation 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (all)

peer

Associated with each Component are three objects:

the standard AWT button object.
a peer mirroring interfacing button object constructed in the style that the native GUI likes.
perhaps also a hidden button object internal to the native GUI.

The behaviour of the particular Component can depend heavily on the peer. The peer object for a Button, for example, contains platform-dependent code to hook into the native GUI Windows button-drawing code, whereas the AWT button object would be identical for all platforms. The same Java program may behave quite differently on different platforms, following the maxim, when in Rome do as the Romans.

In Swing, there is no peer native gui object for each Component, just a peer object for the entire application, which Swing then manages totally like a giant Canvas, displaying the various components on it all on its own.

AWT
Swing

	Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, broken/redirected link reports and suggestions to improve this page to Roedy Green :
	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
	Your face IP:[38.103.63.16]	The information on this page is for non-military use only.
	You are visitor number 6,128.	Military use includes use by defence contractors.
	You can get a fresh copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/Mindprod website mirror)
	http://mindprod.com/jgloss/peer.html	J:\mindprod\jgloss\peer.html