Customer Reviews

Desktop Java Live

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have developed Swing graphical user interfaces for years and during all this time I wished I could finally read a practical and relevant book. Most of the books out there all focus on explaining that a JButton is, surprisingly, a button widget.

Desktop Java Live is many steps ahead and actually presents what you really need to know in order to create snappy and neat Swing GUI. Every programmer knows how to use J2SE documentation to figure out how to create component and customize their properties. DJL will teach you the inner workings of world-class applications.

This book is also the best way to discover developer productivity libraries like Foxtrot or JGoodies Forms. It is the definitive proof the number of pages isn't related to the amount of knowledge delivered by the book :)

I've been coding Swing for close to ten years and I've never seen a book on Swing that tackles the topic in such a sensible and easy to understand fashion. Instead of going through the technologies or being an annotated reference guide, Desktop Java Live takes you through how to build a real application. In each chapter he discusses the development issues an application programmer will face in real life. The chapters on validation, binding, and threading were very useful, especially since so few books ever address the topic. For anyone who plans to build a real Swing application, this book is a must have.

There is a real need for Swing books that tell you how to do things in the real world. [Desktop Java Live] is the first book I have come across that is trying to do that. Even all the books called "Advanced ...","Extreme...", etc., all they do is redo the Java [API] docs for the more advanced components.

I concur with everyone else. This is the only book I've found that talks about writing desktop application interfaces in Java on a professional level and just doesn't dwell on what a JPanel or a JButton is or the event handling model in Swing. This book pretty much assumes you already know all of that and goes past this to show you how to build scalable and flexible applications using open source libraries when needed. It also does a great job of talking about how to properly thread a Java GUI application and when you would want to do this. However, don't think that because this book is out of print you have to pay these outrageous used prices of one hundred plus dollars. Instead, go to sourcebeat's website, which you can find simply by typing "sourcebeat" into Google. Go to the top address listed, and the books sourcebeat sells online are along the left side of their homepage. Click on the icon for Desktop Java Live, and you will be able to buy a copy for just under twenty dollars, which I think was the cost when it was in print. You'll then get an electronic copy emailed to you which you can browse on your computer or print out if you like. Although the book has most of the source code in it, it is not all in there. Thus sourcebeat also has the book's complete code available in zipfile format for you to download so that you can try it out and modify if you like.

Having read this book, I keep thinking I wish I'd had a copy of it about a year ago. It doesn't just tell you how to add components to a JPanel and display them on the screen, it describes how to architect and build a desktop based application using available libraries (mainly the excellent JGoodies) and programming patterns (such as PresentationModel). It also goes into much more complex rich client issues such as threading (something a lot of books tend to gloss over), and shows the developer how to use the likes of Foxtrot and Spin to handle these.

A definite must for anyone involved with rich client application programming... plus the Sourcebeat model, means there's more to come :)

Desktop Java Live takes a different approach to building GUIS than most books take. Instead of focusing on the Swing, AWT, and SWT APIs, this book tells you how to use Java to build your client applications. This is the only book I've seen that pulls together intermediate and advanced concepts LayoutManagers, Swing Threading, Validation, etc. instead of just telling you how to write a JTable.

There's a strong focus on JGoodies throughout the book, but that's not a bad thing.

Just today I purchased a copy of the Desktop Java Live book. I'm very impressed. It covers a lot of stuff that simply isn't covered elsewhere. It was money well spent.