The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs

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.

This volume of The Java(TM) Tutorial tells you how to write GUIs that use the Java(TM) Foundation Classes (JFC) "Swing" components. You can use the information in this book both with the Java 2 platform (Standard Edition, v 1.2 and compatible versions) and with JDK(TM) 1.1 (with additional JFC 1.1 libraries).

The online form of The Java(TM) Tutorial has covered the Swing components since their first public early access release--Swing 0.2, which came out in July, 1997. Through the many early access releases, the Tutorial kept pace with API changes and additions. Readers and reviewers kept us on our toes, helping us improve each page tremendously. However, readers often requested a printed version of the online material. This book is that version. About This Book's Structure

The hyperlinked origins of this book may be evident as you read it. For instance, underlined phrases throughout this book mimic online links. A link to material within this book is followed by the appropriate page number. A link to material outside this book, such as to the JDK API documentation, is accompanied by a footnote that contains a URL. Other evidence of this book's online origin can be found on the first page of each lesson and major section, which provides the URL where the lesson or section can be found in the online Tutorial.

You might be wondering why we use the terms "trails" and "lessons." We know that people don't learn linearly. People learn by posing a problem, solving it, uncovering other problems, solving them, and learning information as the need arises. Our original vision for the online Tutorial was to encourage and enable this type of thinking and learning. We envisioned a mountain of ski trails, where at any junction, a reader could choose the most interesting or appropriate path at that time. But we also needed some sort of structure and organization, so we created a two-tiered hierarchy: trails at the top level and lessons within them. This book consists of the largest Tutorial trail, Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing. Acknowledgments

We would like to thank every member of the Swing project. They're a great team of people who do excellent work and are fun to be around. For help with general technical issues, we depended on two people. Hans Muller, the Swing project lead, provided not only reviews of individual sections, but also gave sound advice and help with overall issues. Amy Fowler reviewed individual sections and, as someone with broad knowledge of both the AWT and Swing, helped us to correctly describe such architectural features as graphics support.

Reviewers of individual how-to sections include Philip Milne, who gave masterful reviews of the table and list portions and supplied the sorter example. Georges Saab reviewed the menu- and action-related discussions. Scott Violet provided invaluable help with the text and tree pages. Jeff Dinkins reviewed several sections and also provided quality-of-life enhancements such as tile samples and miniature phone lists.

Earl Johnson and Peter Korn, from the accessibility team, gently prodded us into covering accessibility well. Their demos, coaching, and careful review of the accessibility section helped us improve it greatly.

It's always a pleasure working with Pat Chan, whose early review of this book helped us determine its scope and approach.

Other reviewers and Swing team members that we'd like to thank include Mike Albers, Tim Prinzing, Tom Santos, Steve Wilson, Rich Schiavi, Tom Ball, Jim Graham, and Hania Gajewska. Rick Levenson, the original manager of the Swing project, was very supportive. We look forward to working with the new manager, Howard Rosen.

Alison Huml performed production duties on this book, juggling coursework, paid work, RSI, and a household move. Without her, this book wouldn't exist. She also drew most of the pictures in this book, with the exception of the cartoony ones, which were drawn by Kathy's sweetheart Nathan.

Jennifer Ball helped us at crucial points, doing such tasks as checking API tables and code snippets, and converting graphics examples.

Lisa Friendly, our manager and series editor, gave us the freedom and support necessary to do our work--and enjoy it. Stans Kleijnen and Jon Kannegaard, respectively the director of product engineering and the vice president of the Java platform, also contributed to an atmosphere that let everyone do their best.

We'd also like to thank the team at Addison-Wesley: Mike Hendrickson, Sarah Weaver, Evelyn Pyle, Jacquelyn Young, Marina Lang, and Julie DeBaggis. They've been a pleasure to work with.

Finally, thank you to our readers.

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