Customer Reviews

Java AWT Reference (Java Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is 1045 pages long and has a split personality. The first 519 pages do a wonderful job covering all aspects of the AWT with fine explanations and concise examples. It's even peppered with helpful diagrams to explain the example code further.

Unfortunately, the last half of the book leaves a lot to be desired. It's ALL reference material virtually airlifted from Java in a Nutshell. It does give a little more detail than Nutshell, but not by much.

If this book had been cut in half (and reduced in price accordingly), it would be a perfect AWT book. I just hope the upcoming O'Reilly Swing book doesn't have the same waste of space.

The book is well organized and has lots of useful information in it. What really bothers me about it is that even though it advertises itself as being "1.1" many of the examples are in fact in 1.0. They have a small disclaimer that says that new features have examples in 1.1 and while old features are in 1.0. Can you say lazy?

If you want to do AWT 1.1 programming, get this book. I spent the past four months implementing the new 1.1 AWT features in Metrowerks Java for the Macintosh, and only this book described the new features in enough detail to give me the specification that is sorely lacking in the Sun documentation. Plus, the sample code provided not only an excellent tutorial, but also gave me lots of test cases to work with.

This book isn't just a reference with the API's and constants listed for you. It also has excellent descriptions of the classes, and how they work, along with samples that demonstrate the new features. Many chapters (notable the printing chapter) document bugs in Sun's JDK that you'll run into as well.

The appendices on internationalization using resource bundles and properties is also excellent, and the table on platform-specific event handling (i.e., which VM's/browsers support which events) will save you many hours in debugging.

The most disappointing addition to an otherwise fine O'Reilly Java series. 1.1 AWT is only hinted at. Neither a good reference nor a good tutorial. A shame since there are few good value added AWT references. For now I'll wait for the next crop of JFC/Swing books. First book I've returned in years.

If you have been waiting for a good JDK 1.1 reference book, wait no longer. The Java Awt Reference by John Zukowski is an outstanding book. I have been working on an AWT-intensive consulting assignment for about the past three weeks and have found this book to be invaluable. I was able to find the answer to almost all of my questions in Mr. Zukowski's book, including, for example, answers on how to drive a printer using the new features of the JDK 1.1 AWT. O'Reilly & Associates has a knack for working with outstanding authors and publishing outstanding books and this one is no exception to that rule.

Although this book does a good job of
presenting the AWT API, most of what is
presented is available in pretty much the
same form as part of the standard Java
AWT documentation. More examples that tie
together all the concepts would have
been appreciated. A good example of this
is Dan Heller's excellent Motif book (Vol. 6A)
from ORA.

The book is really very very useful for graphics programming. The features are explained beautifully and I could manage to find all my needs by reading this book. I really appreciate the matter written in it. The book is simply too good. Thanks