JavaBean

Unlike the single-class classic version it separates the widgets into classes, thus it's easier to use and maintain. Still the download size remains extremely small. Compared to Swing the number of classes, code lines, and JavaDocs are remarkably less.

Rich content

Commonly the content of a certain widgets includes a single image, a text, the gap between these, and the horizontal position of the text. Thinlet widgets can contain indefinite number of images, styled texts, gaps, line breaks, or even other widgets. It's flexible and simplifies the API.

Layout

Basically it provides only two layout mangers, an text layout where the content is distributed in lines (and you set the alignment, first line indent, margins, and the line wrap property), and a table layout (and set its margins and gaps, and define the constraints of its subcomponents, like column and rows spans, weights, paddings, alignments, or a static size). All the widgets can be aligned to a text baseline.

Style

Similar to CSS in web pages, the layouts, constraints, and styles are separated from the widget objects, consequently you can't set e.g. a label's font size and alignment directly, you have to create a style item and reuse it for similarly styled labels.

XML & Event

These features remain very similar to the previous version.