Application framework

In computer programming, an application framework^[1] consists of a software framework used by software developers to implement the standard structure of application software.^[2]

Application frameworks became popular with the rise of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), since these tended to promote a standard structure for applications. Programmers find it much simpler to create automatic GUI creation tools when using a standard framework, since this defines the underlying code structure of the application in advance. Developers usually use object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques to implement frameworks such that the unique parts of an application can simply inherit from classes extant in the framework.^{[citation needed]}