What is event polling?
Created May 4, 2012
An event-polling OS catches input signals (keystrokes, mouse clicks, etc.. they're collectively known as 'events') and piles them up in a list called the 'event queue'.
In a multitasking, event polling OS, each program has a private
event queue as part of its context. the OS identifies signals
as they come in and adds them to the appropriate queue. then
each program checks its queue for events while its context is
switched in.
[FAQ Manager Note] Please see
http://www.jguru.com/jguru/faq/view.jsp?EID=8963 for details on how Java uses event polling. In your application, you don't need to poll, because the Java Runtime Environment automatically creates a thread (the "AWT Thread") to poll for you.