The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs (Paperback)

by Kathy Walrath (Author), Mary Campione (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
With the arrival of Sun's Swing/JFC classes, Java developers can create user interfaces that look great and perform just as well as "native" interfaces. The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs provides a hard copy of Sun's popular online tutorial for Swing/JFC development. Its numerous code examples and clear presentation style make this title a fine choice for mastering the ins and outs of today's Swing.

Owing to its Web heritage, digestibility is perhaps this book's most notable feature. Short sections on virtually every topic in Swing programming help bring the reader up to speed with this UI library. Early sections look at getting started and the organization of classes in both applets and applications, as well as useful high-level classes like frames and scroll panes. When it comes to such basic Swing components as text, label, and image controls, Swing beginners will appreciate the concise description of each component along with necessary APIs. More advanced material, such as optimizing repainting of Swing controls and techniques for more efficient tables, will be useful to any Swing developer.

Most computer books use either code excerpts or full-length programs. For the main text of The JFC Swing Tutorial, short code examples are the norm, but with over 300 pages of complete programs in an appendix, this book will also please those who appreciate more complete examples.

Efficient and thorough, this book succeeds in making JFC/Swing enjoyable while imparting a good deal of necessary information. Armed with this book, any intermediate to advanced Java programmer can make sense of today's Swing with a minimum of effort. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: JFC basics, compiling and running JFC programs, JFC applets and applications, pluggable look-and-feel options, layout managers, event listeners and event handling, graphics, images, animation and painting, threads, JComponent, frames and top-level containers, basic and advanced JFC components, tables, trees, models and custom editors, accessibility APIs, and converting code from AWT to JFC.

Product Description
From the author of the "Java Tutorial" comes a book that meets the huge demand for information on Swing, the part of the JFC that streamlines the creation of cross-platform, custom-made graphical users interfaces. The CD-ROM contains the text online and all the examples.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 976 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (June 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201433214
• ISBN-13: 978-0201433210
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #764,124 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the fastest track to writing GUI using Swing..., August 13, 2000

By	Mayer Goldberg (Beer Sheva, Negev Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you know Java, that is, Java without the GUI, and you want to write applets or programs that use GUI components (buttons, menues, text boxes, etc), pick up this book and you'll be writing your own GUI applications in under an hour. Don't bother with the "Differential Equations For Dummies" or with the Web Programming in 21 Days type of books -- Many of them use the older GUI and others, even though they do use Swing, use the older event handling model. If you want to program GUI, then do it right: The book is systematic and accurate and has plenty of examples of code. Use this book for textbook and/or reference.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beter Swing "tutor" is hard to find, February 15, 2000

By	Brian Bowman (Abingdon, MD USA) - See all my reviews

It is clear to me that tutorial (i.e. an aide to "tutor") is what defines this book's purpose. While I agree with the other reviewer's comments about what this book lacks, I would like to complement the authors on what I believe is the greatest benefit of "The JFC Swing Tutorial". This is it seems that no matter problem I'm having with a particular aspect of Swing, this book gives me a "place to start" (isn't this what a tutor is for?). Yes, there are some gaps in its explanation of the Abstract/Default Table and TableColumn Model classes and some of the Event Handling material is too terse, etc.

However, time and time again, I've been in able to jump into this book "mid-trail" and wind up "on course" for solving a Swing-related problem. Some times the journey leads me to the constituent WEB Pages. Other times it's a trip into a JAVA IDE Debugger and/or a look at the javax.swing class soruce files. In any case this book has been the tutor I needed to learn Swing fundamentals and has led me to discover some advanced Swing features as well.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for beginners, but doesn't go far enough., October 17, 1999

By A Customer

The JFC Swing Tutorial is a guide to designing applications that use the Swing graphical components of the Java 2 Platform, and also Swing for JDK1.1. The authors do a fine job of guiding the reader through the basics concepts of Swing, and the new graphical components. For developers with little AWT experience, the new AWT event-delegation model is described in detail - you'll learn how to write event handlers that respond to GUI component actions.

I'm impressed by the clarity of this guide to Swing. Most Swing books presume a high level of experience with constructing GUIs in Java. However, I feel that the book could have gone much further, and provided some moderate-to-large scale applications as examples of what can be done with Swing. Many books devote a chapter or two towards the end to a Do-It-Yourself project, and offer step-by-step assistance. This is lacking from the book, and would have really added to its appeal. I also found the layout of the book distracting - it has been converted from a hypertext document, and all the links are still underlined.  

The JFC Swing Tutorial is a good general guide to learning about the Swing components. I feel that beginners will get more out of this book though than experienced AWT programmers, who may wish to consider other Swing titles. The book also includes a CD, with copies of Swing, JDK1.1 and the Java 2 SDK.  -- David Reilly, for the Java Coffee Break