The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs (Java Series)
The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs (Java Series) by Alison Huml, Kathy Walrath, Mary Campione and Sharon Zakhour
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Number of Pages:
- 784
- ISBN:
- 0201914670
- Product Group:
- book
- Publisher:
- Prentice Hall
- Publication Date:
- March 11, 2004
- BooksForGeeks.com ID:
- 1319
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, the organisation of classes in both applets and applications, as well as useful high-level classes like frames and scroll panes and the like. 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 optimising re-painting 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.
Reviews for The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs (Java Series)
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This is not a beginners tutorial
Rated out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2009
I have about 50 books on computing going back as far as Dreamweaver3. This is by and far the worst book I have ever come across. If you are experienced with java and swing it may be considered a poor reference book. A Swing tutorial it is not. Having studied java for 12 months Iam due to progress to the GUI aspect in October. I thought this book would give me a head start. In short time I found it so frustrating it almost put me off java for life. It is just snippets of code so badly broken up that I soon gave up on it. The book has no direction and meanders all over the place.If your looking for a tutorial type book simply dont buy this book. I have given it 1 star as the cover is rather nice. -
Very Disappointing
Rated out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2009
After reading The Java Programming Language -The Java Programming Language (Java Series) - which IMO is an extraordinarily well written book which follows a logical, linear path from start to finish and includes a great level of detail and description, I found The JFC Swing Tutorial almost shoddy in comparison. Examples are half given with sections of code replaced with an elipsis to represent where the bits that probably would have helped you understand the example have been chopped out to save space. Not content with that, the authors start to explain a concept and then refer you to another place in the book to read more about it before you return - or worse still, they recommend an outside resource for exactly the information that you expected from this book. This results in a very unsatisfactory flicking back and forth throughout to glean very little in-depth information. Unfortunately, I was left feeling that I needed to read another book on Swing.
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Pants for the Beginner
Rated out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2007
I purchased this book on the strength of the reviews previously given, I wanted clear concise text coupled with good code so I could see how the whole learnings fit together.
What I got was good descriptions but with bitty code! Yes this book has code in it, but they're snippets. For example, In chapter 2 the book has one complete code listing after which the rest are just portions of code! And if you have no idea how to add a button to a panel or where to place that code, then how the heck can you even get the button to work? Answer: the internet(!) - which is certainly not why i bought the book in the first place! And before you ask the CD doesnt have all the complete code listings. It does have an apparently arbitrary directory structure which is absolutely useless to find the code listings your looking for - surely organising the cd under chapter headings would have been so much simpler!
I hardly ever and I mean EVER leave a one star rating for a book, but the sheer frustration experienced from this one merited it! If you're just starting out, go for something different! -
Second edition, better than the first.
Rated out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2006
The second edition still has the clean informative style but it has been brought up to the Java 2 v.1.4.2 platform and the layout has been improved.
All the pages of code have been relegated to the CD, though relevant lines of code appear in the text with the description of component use. The book is now 744 pages of solid, yet readable, descriptive text.
The layout has changed more to the style of a reference book, the first edition did have a tutorial feel. The first 146 pages of the second edition are still in tutorial form but the next 586 are in reference format and the remainder are a troubleshooting appendix. There is also a comprehensive 21 page index.
The first edition was my first reference for all things JFC, now the second edition has replaced it. -
Become an expert in minutes
Rated out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2005
By far the best java educational book i have found to date. All information is clearly described and the complete code listings allow you to be removed from the shackles of a computer for five minutes. I had begun designing a prototype interface for my project a few days before i received the book and it seemed very clumsy and awkward. Within two hours of having the book to hand I had developed a much more intuitive look and feel interface with split panes, desktop panes, toolbars, multiple menus etc etc.The final big and yet simple advantage of this book, is a single chapter showing an image of every component. Confused on just how to display something, or get some input from a user, just flick to the chapter and within minutes you will have designed yourself a cracking good interface.
Highly highly recommended.