Core Swing: Advanced Programming (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written as a supplement to the author's Core Java Foundation Classes, Kim Topley's Core Swing: Advanced Programming delves deeply into several important Java topics. Every experienced Java programmer will find very useful techniques for working with Swing controls and other high-level UI features.

The book zeroes in on two aspects of Swing interfaces. First, there are over 500 pages on optimizing your usage of a variety of Swing text controls. The author provides solutions to mimicking native-style operating system support for data validation, numeric input, and special processing with user input. There's also excellent coverage on the extensive support in Swing for loading and displaying HTML. Sections on extending the Swing table control will let you change how table data is displayed and edited (with coverage of custom renderers and cell editors).

In addition, this book explores features in Swing that allow you to carry out advanced user interface operations, such as drag-and-drop functionality and undo support. Throughout this text, the author uses short code excerpts that solve problems and showcase brilliant Swing implementations. By concentrating on strategies and solutions, and not just the Swing APIs, the author shows you not only how to solve particular problems but also the underlying Swing design philosophy, so you can take this library even further in your own programs.

If anything, this text proves once and for all that Swing is ready to take on native operating systems like Windows with its support for advanced user features. This book delivers some really valuable and impossible-to-find information for any experienced Java programmer who needs to do more with Swing. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Extending Swing text controls, text wrapping and scrolling, manipulating text documents, input validation, text attributes, highlighters and carets, custom views, Swing HTML support classes, viewing HTML, editor kits, cascading style sheets and Swing, bi-directional text for international applications, advanced table features in Swing, custom table renderers, table editing and cell editors, drag-and-drop support in Swing, drag sources and drop targets, using tree controls for file information, undo support in Swing.

Product Description

Discusses how to exploit the Swing text and table controls to the fullest, customize and create your own text fields with features that sophisticated users expect, and build your own editor and file viewers. Softcover. CD-ROM included. DLC: Graphical user interfaces (Computer system).

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Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education (December 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130832928
• ISBN-13: 978-0130832924
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,102,275 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Core Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No time for experimenting ? This is your book, February 28, 2000

By	"i-man" (Jersey City, USA) - See all my reviews

I like the 'Core...' books and really appreciate their format. This one is no exception. The chapters are as with the 'Core Java 2' books very clear and to the point. I wanted to know about menus, it got me where I wanted to go in 10 minutes, same with custom dialogs. Sofar I read about 80% of the book in random order. I just read those chapters on the subject I need more info on. No need to read previous chapters, no need to read following chapters either. If you're like me, and don't have enough time to do all that you want to. You definitely need this book.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for Swing developers., January 17, 2000

By A Customer

This is the second book by Kim Topley that I have purchased, I bought the first book: Java Foundation Classes when it first came out and found it very useful, so was very pleased to see the new book.

I have found these books to be a good source of reference and good tutorials. The text is clear and concise and the examples well written and illustrate the subject very well. I initially bought the book because of work I was doing on Drag and Drop and Undo, but found the whole book very useful.

Well worth reading by anyone developing in Swing.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please Read the Whole Title, August 26, 2001

By	K.W.Topley (Reading, Berkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

Several recent reviews of this book seem to be written with a misunderstanding of its scope. As its title says, this book is about advanced Swing programming - it is not intended as an introductory book.

The reviewer who complains about there not being a description of how a table works or which is the row and which is the column when building a TableModel form an Object[][] is perfectly correct to say that it is not covered here - in fact, all of that is completely covered in Core JFC, which *IS* an introductory text. Returning the book might well be appropriate in this case - but only because this is not the book that he should have ordered in the first place.