At SLAC, we developed a minimal GUI framework (GFW) for Java applications. After we considered frameworks as diverse as Eclipse and XAL, we decided that all of them lack at least some of our desired features and generally are too complex to quickly build robust applications upon. In contrast, simplicity and customization are the main criteria behind GFW's existence. Using only basic Swing components, GFW defines a standard layout for GUI applications and allows the developers to extend the generic look-and-feel without any constraints. Moreover, GFW provides- but doesn't enforce- a simple event-handling mechanism that was inspired by Matlab's callback implementation.