SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1 [Paperback]

Steve Northover (Author), Mike Wilson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321256638 | ISBN-13: 978-0321256638 | Publication Date: July 8, 2004 | Edition: 1

The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a new class library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in Java. Created as part of the Eclipse project, SWT allows developers to build efficient, portable applications that directly access the user-interface facilities of the operating systems it is implemented on. This revolutionary technology makes it possible to create Java-based applications that are indistinguishable from a platform's native applications.

SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will show you how to:

• Get SWT, install it, and invoke it from your programs.
• Understand widgets--the building blocks of GUI--and how they interact with users and compose a GUI.
• Use graphics routines to configure the appearance of native widgets and draw application-specific graphics.
• Apply best practices from real-world uses of SWT.
• Appreciate what makes a quality SWT program.

In this book--the first definitive guide to SWT--two of the technology's lead designers and implementers show you how to break the task of building a GUI-based application into components. They then show how these components are modeled in SWT and provide a series of graded examples. The result is a guided tour of the essential aspects of this exciting toolkit, ranging from mouse and keyboard handling to user-interface controls for native operating systems.

If you want to build modern GUI-based application, SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will prove an invaluable guide and reference.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a new class library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in Java. Created as part of the Eclipse project, SWT allows developers to build efficient, portable applications that directly access the user-interface facilities of the operating systems it is implemented on. This revolutionary technology makes it possible to create Java-based applications that are indistinguishable from a platform's native applications.

SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will show you how to:

• Get SWT, install it, and invoke it from your programs.
• Understand widgets--the building blocks of GUI--and how they interact with users and compose a GUI.
• Use graphics routines to configure the appearance of native widgets and draw application-specific graphics.
• Apply best practices from real-world uses of SWT.
• Appreciate what makes a quality SWT program.

In this book--the first definitive guide to SWT--two of the technology's lead designers and implementers show you how to break the task of building a GUI-based application into components. They then show how these components are modeled in SWT and provide a series of graded examples. The result is a guided tour of the essential aspects of this exciting toolkit, ranging from mouse and keyboard handling to user-interface controls for native operating systems.

If you want to build modern GUI-based application, SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will prove an invaluable guide and reference.

About the Author

The principal architect of the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), Steve Northover joined IBM OTI Labs in 1990. He is an expert on performance, programming for operating systems, and native user interface toolkits. He is the lead of the Eclipse SWT team and is one of the few people who understands the implementation of the toolkit on every platform.

Mike Wilson has been a part of IBM OTI Labs since its inception in 1987 as Object Technology International, Inc. Over the years he has played a major part in many of the company's most significant successes, including contributing to the design, implementation, and maintenance of SWT. Currently, he is active in many aspects of the Eclipse Platform, including the Core and Team teams.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (July 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321256638
• ISBN-13: 978-0321256638
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,722,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book for the details -- and you'll need them!, January 1, 2005

By 

Alexander Garrett (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1 (Paperback)

First, a caveat -- this book only covers SWT, the Standard Widget Toolkit, and not JFace. Presumably, JFace will be covered in a forthcoming book. That said, using JFace well requires a good knowledge of SWT, so it would be a mistake to avoid this book just because it doesn't include JFace topics.

This book was written by Steve Northover, one of the architects of SWT, and Northover's profound knowledge of SWT is evident on every page. He communicates clearly and efficiently the details that you need to know in order to be a good SWT programmer. Understanding event-driven programming is skill of a different order than "regular" programming. Operations aren't as neatly sequenced in the former and, as a result, both programming and debugging can be more difficult, especially for one not used to the programming style. Northover spends a lot of time covering the internals of SWT and making sure that things like the Display and Controls are clearly explained, rather than simply providing examples of how to write an address book in SWT, or something equally useless.

After finishing this book you'll have a solid knowledge of how SWT works and how to write SWT applications that are performant and reasonably defect-free. You'll have an understanding of how the SWT framework works and why certain design choices were made. This knowledge will help you write applications that naturally extend SWT, rather than bending it into a shape it wasn't meant to assume.

I've read Manning's "SWT/JFace in Action" and Apress' "The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace" as well as this book. Additionally, I'm on a project where we're building a complicated Java client using SWT/JFace and I spend about 30 hours each week up to the elbows in GUI coding. I'm fortunate that I had the opportunity to read Northover's book. Unfortunately, it was the last book I read. If I had read it first, there are a lot of things I would have done differently. Well, there's always refactoring. :)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Guide to SWT, July 30, 2004

By 

Lee Roberts (Cary, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1 (Paperback)

This is one of two books that I purchased at Java One a few weeks ago (I also have the Gamma/Beck book which is also part of the same series). It is written by the chief architects of SWT itself and provides some wonderful insight into the internals of SWT. The examples are well chosen and easy to follow and lots of tips are provided for dealing various arcane SWT issues.

The book intro includes a section on the history of SWT which I found to be fascinating given all of the Swing vs. SWT discussions in the press over the last couple of years. Every widget and layout manager is discussed in considerable detail and there is a nice discussion on creating custom widgets and using custom graphics.

Ultimately, this is a great reference that you will want to keep close by, if you are planning to build any SWT apps, Eclipse plugins or Eclipse RCP apps. I very much look forward to reading Volume 2!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SWT Fundamentals, May 14, 2005

By 

A. Jain (San Mateo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1 (Paperback)

If you want to learn the SWT fundamentals, read this book. Remember that JFace, Eclipse IDE, Eclipse Rich Client Platform applications all use SWT at the bottom. While the book does not cover some advanced topics like custom widgets and layouts, it will build a solid foundation for understanding these advanced topics.