To address the needs of developers who wanted to create commercial applications that behave and appear identical across all platforms, Netscape created the Internet Foundation Classes (IFC). While IFC was a robust framework which delivered many important functionalities to the development community, Java developers demanded a single industry standard solution


As a result, Sun, Netscape, and IBM joined force to create Java Foundation Classes which provides a single GUI component and services solution. Java Foundation Classes builds on top of the existing AWT by integrating the best of new Sun technologies and Netscape's Internet Foundation Classes.

JFC -- A Comprehensive Set of Classes and Services
With JDK software version 1.1, the web-centric AWT GUI toolkit becomes part of a comprehensive set of GUI classes and services called The Java Foundation Classes. The Java Foundation Classes, a superset of the AWT, provides a robust infrastructure for creating commercial quality intranet and Internet applets and applications. The JFC is the result of developer and end user feedback and provides a significant advance in the development of client applications written in the Java programming language.

The JFC released in JDK 1.1 provides a wide range of new features that enable Java developers to be more productive while delivering applications that are fully integrated into the desktop environment. The JFC contains a powerful, mature delegation event model, printing, clipboard support, a lightweight UI framework and is 100% JavaBeans compliant. The new capabilities of JFC make Java a platform that will support the most sophisticated enterprise applications. Development of commercial applications using Java is now both possible and attractive.
Java and the AWT freed developers from being tied to a specific or proprietary platform for GUI application development and deployment. Today, the JFC provides the core set of classes and services enabling applications to scale from the desktop to the enterprise and across multiple platforms. Java developers will find the additions and improvements to the toolkit greatly enhance their ability to deliver 100% Java applications quickly and provide reliability and cross-platform consistency.