Customer Reviews

The Definitive Guide to Java Swing (Definitive Guides)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a standard GUI toolkit walkthrough. Each of the chapters covers a set of the UI controls and provides a set of code samples to show how the different features are used. More than most this book relies on the code to do the heavy lifting. Several example code blocks run several pages with no comments or interleaved exposition.

In a book like this I look for both a good walkthrough, and a good reference section. I find that the walkthrough is good. But the long-term reference value isn't there. So while you may get an education from it, you aren't going to be going back to it on your bookshelf looking for classes and methods. That being said, with today's IDEs and their integrated documentation, this may be all the book you need. Your call.

The book is good for examples of using various SWING components. For new comers to Java SWING, however, it does a poor job of explaining what the components are and when to use them. It makes references to AWT but if you don't know AWT, it doesn't help. I found more useful information in that area from Sun's website. Sun's website also does a better job of explaining SWING's architecture and how it fits into MVC architecture.

This book is an alright reference, but a poor tutorial. The problem is that there is no examples of a complete GUI, especially real life examples. Sadly, this a a flaw in many other Java books, Head First Java is particularily bad in this regard.

What these types of books need is a full blown example, one that has a menu bar, tool bar, and multiple items on one or more panels, complete with layout and listeners.

A book like this must be a nightmare for a total beginners, having to piece together info from all over the book.

'The Definitive Guide to Java Swing' by John Zukowski is a bloated book that just isn't worth the price. I found the content to be alright most of the time in this 900 page doorstop, but the lack of many GOOD examples and poor layout really hurts this book. One of the things that drives me nuts about apress books is the lack of color within their texts, while so many competing publishers produce books that jump out and make you WANT to read what lies within. Dark grey mixes with black and white in the sparse dialogs that are contained within, and for a book that talks about the GUI technology of Swing, you would figure that this would not be the case.

There's nothing overtly that makes this book outright poor, I just feel that there are probably other choices on the shelf for Java Swing that would be better used as a reference manual or teaching tool.

Apress, you need to learn the word BREVITY. Not only will you save $$$ on less pages to print, edit and ship, but this will make for a tighter book that will sell better.

***

I found this book to be of little value. I did not gain any additional knowledge beyond what can be found in the javadoc and tutorials. It is also extremely dry and didn't really demonstrate an advanced understanding of swing. I bought this book when I first started with Swing and quickly had to replace it with one of the far better books that are available.

This book fails to quickly bring new Swing developers up to speed with practical examples early on. Its front-loaded with way too much info (that should come later) before you actually get into practical material half way through the book that presents the actual swing components. It works, its accurate, but it really tried my patience. Get another book.

If you are not already familiar with the precise technical meaning (in Swing/AWT) of terms such as window, frame, dialog, component, and container, or not already familiar with AWT, you will find the introductory chapters tough going. The term "Definitive" in the title is certainly misleading.

Also be prepared for syntax errors in the code samples and poorly organized (and confusing) section headers, not to mention prose that seems to make little sense.

This book is a total waste of time and money. I am a programmer by profession and needed a book I could keep handy for a reference. I was in the process of learning Swing (already a Java programmer) and I needed something I could use as both a reference and a tutorial. This book does neither very well at all. As a reference, it does a poor job of documenting the available interfaces. The examples are trite, confusing, incomplete, and in some cases wrong. Do not waste your time with this rag, after several attempts to use it I finally gave up in frustration and pitched it in the trash, where it belongs.

This is a useful and well-written book. His examples are clear and helpful.

Unlike other books that throw the API at you, this has excellent examples.

You do have to wade through some of the usual "This extends that, which extends that, which implements that," but the examples make it worth it.

I was surprised by the mediocre reviews that I saw here. My guess is that these reviews come from people who need Sun's tutorial to get started.

This book is one of the bests. It teaches you all the features of Swing, including the way on how to create Java Swing code that will suite all systems. Every aspect is shown with at least one example. It shows you how to create reusable code. It also covers the more advanced features of Swing like trees, undo, drag and drop and so on.
The author explains the in an extra chapter the use of MVC.