Before moving on, it is necessary to make one important point: although Swing eliminates a number of the limitations inherent in the AWT, Swing does not replace it. Instead, Swing is built on the foundation of the AWT. This is why the AWT is still a crucial part of Java. Swing also uses the same event handling mechanism as the AWT. Therefore, a basic understanding of the AWT and of event handling is required to use Swing.