Are Swing applications really used nowadays? I don't find a place where they are used. Is it okay to skip the AWT and Swing package (I learned a bit of the basics though)?
You may checkout Swing Sightings.
This website is hosted by SUN and it is dedicated to sw projects that use Swing. There are a lot of projects using Swing ...
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/sightings/