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Reviews (75)

Encyclopedic tome on Swing is a greatreference
This extremely hefty book on Swing has just about everything in it. However, it is intended to be a reference on Swing, not a tutorial. The problem with the Java Swing API is that it is so large and unwieldy itself that it is difficult to write a complete and useful reference that does not reflect that fact. If you need a good tutorial on Java Swing, you might want to look at the Core Java books by Cornell and read the chapters that apply to Swing. Cornell manages to carve out the basics of writing a Swing application very clearly without getting wrapped around the axle in details you do not need if you are a beginner. Then, come back to this book when you need to write an application to get the details you need. Since everything in Swing is a JavaBean, much of each component's behavior is controlled by a set of properties that are manipulated by accessor methods. Thus, this book has a table for each class that presents the class properties, the data type for each property, the accessor methods, and the default values. In addition, the book has plenty of demonstration code that shows how to use just about all of the various Swing components. The book even has chapters dedicated to changing the look and feel of components and also repainting issues, which loom large in Swing. You can download all of the book's code from the book's website at O'Reilly and Associates. I highly recommend this book to anyone who already knows the bare basics of writing applications with Swing and needs a useful reference. There is no better one out there in publication of which I am aware.

Good Book With a Bad Title
This is for people who have a working knowledge of Swingand who want a comprehensive reference on their desks. I ampreparing for the java Developer exam and thought this would help me get up to speed with Swing. But this is an over kill. Trying to learn Swing with this book is like trying to open a can of Coke with a bulldozer. It would have been more helpful if the Title was something like 'Swing Reference'. If you want to learn some Swing to get some work done very quickly stay away. If you are in the Guru class then go for it. 4 stars because it is indeed a well written reference (Juding from Chapter 1 and 3 and some skimming) But not 5 stars because the Title is misleading

yikes!!
I can't recall a tech book so thoroughly unreadable! Maybe if I was more well versed in Swing this might make a little more sense, but seriously....it's great that these folks know all the inheritance lines and can spit them out in eight words or less, but seriously...imagine this as a classroom lecture..anybody awake? anybody still here? well, this class inherits from that or this implemements that interface, and if you look closely, you'll see how this references what we said 47 pages ago (or better yet, what we're gonna say 36 pages down the road!)...all well and good...but we're trying to write real programs and solve real problems....c'mon guys, we're not experts here, else we wouldn't be buying the book!! how about a litle real world usage...I don't have to time to check out the API docs to try and figure out what these guys are yakking about...a major disappointment. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Interfaces    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Data Transmission Systems - General    7. Java (Computer program languag    8. Java (Computer program language)    9. Programming Languages - Java    10. Swing (Computer file)    11. Computers / Languages / Programming    12. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    13. Java & variants    14. Java, JFC, Java Foundation Classes, Swing, GUI   

Editorial Review

If you're developing software that will be used by a large group of people, you need to give it a good-looking front-end--in Java 2, that means you have to use Swing. An excellent resource, Read more

Reviews (48)

Still good
Like a fine movie, this book is still very useful even as the language advances. A wonderful reference I still find myself reaching for it several times a week for parts of the GUI that I don't reach into that often. Considering that I use the Eclipse front-end I do all of my GUI coding by hand (that and most GUI builders put out some really terrible code), so maybe I am a bit atypical in this regard.

Pure java
That is all, pure java. Simple, organized, interfaced, estructured, conceptual and objective point of view of reality. Some examples, lots of them, really, some descriptions of classes, all of swing JFC, really, and that's all folks. No more, no less. But that's the best, it's a reference of swing, "thousand and more" pages reference, but clear reference. A must if you're interested in collecting java muscle books. A very comprehensive book
This book is very comprehensive and is a must for any serious Swing developer. I have found it as a good reference for all sorts of examples and also in a method lookup like way. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books And Software    3. Computer Books: Languages    4. Computer Graphics - General    5. Computer Networks    6. Computer Programming Languages    7. Computers    8. Computers - Languages / Programming    9. Java (Computer program languag    10. Java (Computer program language)    11. Java foundation classes    12. Programming Languages - Java    13. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    14. Java & variants    15. Programming languages   

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Reviews (10)

Spruce up your Swing!
The Swing library is what makes Java usable for most users; ask them to interact with a purely text interface, and they'll look at you like you grew a set of antennae. But the Swing library is difficult to absorb due to its size, and to tell the truth, the results I have seen with simple Swing were less than inspiring.
Some dubious hacks.
Some of the hacks are, well, very hacky.The auto-completion class here is worthless, more of a bare starting place to mabye make something useful with a lot of work.But why bother when there is better code out there on the web (google "swinguistuff completion", or check out swinglabs).

Belongs In Your Swing Toolkit
Simply put, this is an incredibly useful book for Swing programmers. I've written a fair amount of GUI code and have needed several all-encompassing Swing books strewn about my desktop while doing so. Each had their own strengths and weaknesses, so if you had the right collection you could pretty much figure out how to do anything. (Except GridBagLayout of course :-)
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Java (Computer program language)    5. Programming - General    6. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    7. Programming Languages - Java    8. Security - General    9. Swing (Computer file)    10. Swing (Computer software)    11. Computers / Languages / Programming    12. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    13. Computers/Security - General    14. Java & variants    15. Java, Swing, AWT, Hacks, GUI, graphical user interface, widget, SWT    

Editorial 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. Read more

Reviews (21)

I Second Thomas Duff's Review
The JFC Swing Tutorial Second Edition is among the very best how-to-do it programming books I've read---and I've read scores!For this reason, I felt compelled to write a review of the book, admiring its organization, applauding its authors and encouraging progammers who need to to write Java GUIs to hurry up and by it.But then I read Thomas Duff's review;I became redundant.My recommendation is to read Mr. Duff's excellent review---knowing that I agree with every word of it.

great potential but poor delivery
This book has a great potential to be instructive, however, i give it a one star because it fails miserably in the delivery.The book has one full example in chapter 2 then after that all the examples are from the CD and the information about a particular issue such as comboboxes for example is strewn with code snippets that only address the most basic information; but when one looks at the full example from the CD, it contains much more in depth code that goes beyond the scope of the particular lesson.This left me with a confused situation.On one hand i have a very basic example that only shows the bare minimum of how to use a component and on the other i have code that introduces methods that are not very pertinent to the example and require more explanation.If it is pertinent then it should be explained fully which is not.
Second edition is great
This tutorial is well laid out and thorough. It looks suitable for learning Swing (I'm already fairly proficient) except for beginners to GUIs. It's also well organized as a reference work. It's much easier to understand than "Java Swing" from O'Reilly.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics    3. Computer Graphics - General    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Graphical user interfaces (Com    7. Graphical user interfaces (Computer systems)    8. Java foundation classes    9. Programming Languages - Java    10. User Interfaces    11. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    12. Java & variants   

Reviews (6)

Bloated Overkill
'The Definitive Guide to Java Swing' by John Zukowski is a bloated book that just isn't worth the price.I found the content to be alright most of the time in this 900 page doorstop, but the lack of many GOOD examples and poor layout really hurts this book.One of the things that drives me nuts about apress books is the lack of color within their texts, while so many competing publishers produce books that jump out and make you WANT to read what lies within.Dark grey mixes with black and white in the sparse dialogs that are contained within, and for a book that talks about the GUI technology of Swing, you would figure that this would not be the case.
Decent, but sorely lacking as a tutorial
This book is an alright reference, but a poor tutorial. The problem is that there is no examples of a complete GUI, especially real life examples. Sadly, this a a flaw in many other Java books, Head First Java is particularily bad in this regard.
OK - Not great
The book is good for examples of using various SWING components.For new comers to Java SWING, however, it does a poor job of explaining what the components are and when to use them.It makes references to AWT but if you don't know AWT, it doesn't help.I found more useful information in that area from Sun's website. Sun's website also does a better job of explaining SWING's architecture and how it fits into MVC architecture. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming Languages - Java    5. Computers / Programming / General   

Editorial Review

Written for the experienced Java developer, Read more

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Reviews (36)

Very well written. A must have reference...
Its a must have for all intermediate to expert level developers. Lots of good code. I develop applications using Swing and really, this is the only book that I turn to for reference. You will tend to get some good ideas from the code they have presented and it definitely helps in understanding the Swing framework and designing better UIs.

Who is this book for?

real world code
This book allows one to quickly go from a Swing amateur to a very competent Swing programmer. The quality of the demo code is good, and more than just toy problems are tackled. I didn't give this book five stars because of the number of typos. While they generally don't detract from understanding the topic at hand, they are annoying.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Java (Computer language)    5. Java (Computer program languag    6. Java (Computer program language)    7. Programming - General    8. Programming Languages - Java    9. Swing (Computer file)    10. Swing (Computer program)    11. Computer Programming    12. Computers / Languages / Programming    13. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    14. Computers/Programming - General    15. Java & variants   

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming Languages - Java    5. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    6. Java & variants   

Subjects:  1. COBOL (Computer program langua    2. COBOL (Computer program language)    3. Computer Books: Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Java (Computer program languag    7. Java (Computer program language)    8. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    9. Programming Languages - General    10. Cobol    11. Computers / Programming / Software Development    12. Java & variants   

Editorial Review

Written as a supplement to the author's Read more

Reviews (18)

Very good, rather specialized, advanced book
This book was wisely focused on selected advanced Swing topics, rather than trying to be comprehensive.I suspect Kim Topley could write two or three additional books with a similar level of detail on other advanced Swing topics, and it was sensible not to write 2500 pages all at once. Very limited Scope
This book covers only a very few topics: It says 'Advanced'
If you are a newby Swing programmer, get OReilly's Java Swing book for all the gory low level details.When you are done with that, jump into this book for 'advanced' information on Swing for doing real applications.The undo chapter alone is outstanding, providing the best explaination of any book I've looked at... ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books And Software    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Graphical user interfaces (Com    7. Graphical user interfaces (Computer systems)    8. Java (Computer program languag    9. Java (Computer program language)    10. Java foundation classes    11. Programming Languages - Java    12. Swing (Computer file)    13. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    14. Java & variants    15. Programming languages   

Reviews (4)

Not for Novices
If you're new to graphics and Java, this is not a useful book. The first example did not work as displayed in the text and I could not figure out why. Lots of code, very little explanation. I skipped to chapter 3 and discovered the author had switched to applets, but without the required start and stop methods. That example wouldn't run. After a few hours it was clear why the book is not very thick. There is very little explanation. Very frustrating for someone just getting started. Pick another book. (Fortunately this one was cheap.)

Excellent to learn Java 2D API
I knew Java and I wanted a book about Java 2D API. Great very clear examples
This book is excellent.It has very clear examples.I was able to do a stock charting application very quickly by using the examples in this book. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics    3. Computer Graphics - General    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Java (Computer program languag    7. Java (Computer program language)    8. Object-Oriented Programming    9. Programming - General    10. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    11. Programming Languages - Java    12. Computer graphics software    13. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    14. Image processing: graphics (static images)    15. Java & variants   

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Programming Languages - Java   

Reviews (4)

Thorough.Exhaustive.
Excellent sourcefor gaining an understanding of the JFC.Covers the Swing, MVC, and other JFC concepts such as design patterns.

Written in a rush?
This piece of work is a terrible example of a book written with the main purpose of being first in the market and making the most money as fast as possible. WHY?
WASTE YOUR MONEY ELSEWHER ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computers    4. Java (Computer program language)    5. Java foundation classes    6. Programming Languages - Java   

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Reviews (5)

Excellent
This book has two huge chapters on JTable and JTree with lots of examples which I found very useful.For example, how to fix the first two columns of a JTable while the other columns can scroll.Excellent coverage of Events as well.Great book and good examples.

Good Treatment, But not up to J2SE 1.4 Version
The good news is this book has a fairly detailed cover of JFC! However the bad news is it doesn't cover new features and enhancements in J2SE 1.4 for AWT, Swing, etc, even though it was published in the year of 2002. That means many of classes, interfaces, methods, constants, and codes mentioned in the book are obsoleted or deprecated now, not mentioned to the othernew changes in JDK 1.4. I believe that the author has struggled to keep up with the current update too, as well as readers.

Excellent
I found it excellent. It's clear and smart. He points to the point giving even example on how to provide backward compatibility or how to re-arrange your code to use newest sdk.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Networks    4. Computer Programming Languages    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Java (Computer program languag    8. Java (Computer program language)    9. Java foundation classes    10. Programming Languages - Java    11. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    12. Java & variants   

Reviews (7)

Not worth shelling out the $$$
I am a monetarily poor programmer, and I get tired of shelling out my money to learn new areas of programming only to get the book, open it, and realize that the content is barely more than what is freely available on the web. The book for professional Swing development !
This book is not to be used as a reference. It is a tool to teach you all the features of Swing, including all the tips and tricks (that other books won't give you) on how to create Java Swing code that will suite even the most robust sytems. It will also run faster and consume less resources. These 'tricks' will save you a lot of time and effort. It shows you how to make code reusable, short and affective. The exact meaning of good Java code. It teaches you the most advanced features of Swing like trees, undo, drag and drop and so on. Sun's Documentation is Better
The goal of a programming book should be to make it easier to use the language or library. This book doesn't do that. There is no sorting of what is important and what isn't.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Programming Languages - Java    7. Java & variants    8. Object-oriented programming (OOP)   

Editorial Review

Stephen Gutz's competent book about one of Java's graphical user interface (GUI)-building technologies covers everything you'd want in a Swing book--layouts, events, all the components, and more. Gutz focuses on the interface components, detailing buttons, text elements, and tables. Throughout, his code is clear and easy to follow, and a chapter about look-and-feel programming is excellent.Read more

Reviews (25)

Good as far as it goes
My copy has a little different cover, says "2nd edition", and is copyright 2000, but I couldn't find an exact match on Amazon. Fast track to SWING
Upto speed with Swing by Steven Gutz is really a fast track to mostadvanced GUI , the SWING. The authorcovered all features of the SWING.The book is very interesting to read and complete with working examples.All the chapters are organized and well written. It defenitely a neededbook to learn things fast and work with, rather than voluminous and timeconsuiming books. I recommend this book for beginner/ intermediate level ofjava programmers.Thanks for Steven Gutz for his efforts to put the javaprogrammers on fast track!!!

Disappointed that book omits important areas
I read all the reviews and thought this book would provide a goodreference on Swing.While it does introduce developers to Swing, I'vesubsequently found that it glosses over or fails to cover topics that areimportant once you start developing with Swing.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Networks    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Java (Computer program languag    6. Java (Computer program language)    7. Java foundation classes    8. Programming Languages - Java    9. Swing (Computer file)    10. User Interface    11. User interfaces (Computer syst    12. User interfaces (Computer systems)    13. Virtual Reality    14. Computers / Languages / Programming    15. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    16. Java & variants    17. Computers/Internet   

Reviews (2)

Not very clear
The explanations were not that clear and the examples were not that easy to follow.The type of JTable that I was looking for was not covered at all.

Good for every java programmer
You can understand the MVC from this book! ... Read more

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Editorial Review

The most important part of the Java 2 (JDK 1.2) standard is its Swing user interface classes. Read more

Reviews (30)

Introducing Swing + quick class reference
This book is good as an introductory read with a good bit of source code.It assumes you know Java programming and helps you to get started using Swing.The other half of the book is a quick reference without much elaboration - good if you already use Swing and need to recall class information.The code does have some things left out; like in the Internal Frames examples - the author left out the JInternalFrame.show(); call and thus the missing Internal Frames in the MDI.Maybe he did it to get the readers to refer to his reference section-LOL!!! I recommend this reference to any programmer who has used a bit of Java and need to create a useable GUI to interact with their back end.This quick reference does not go in depth and you will need to get other books on advanced Swing programming to implement high quality functionality into your GUI.

Good book for reference
Got this book and so far I like it! It is good as a reference on Java swing components. Also it was very cheap as compared to some of the other expensive swing books.Author has added lot of examples. Use this book if you already know somthing abt Java Swing and want to sharpen up some specific GUI areas. Could have been good - but it is cheap
Although "Pure JFC Swing" is 800 pages, more than half the book is a reference to the Swing API. As a reference it is mostly useless. The pages are not labeled and the classes are listed by package so it is almost impossible to find a class without using the index. Each class contains only the signature of each method with no explanation as to how the method might be used which limits its usefulness. The Sun online API is a much better reference. The first half of the book is an introduction to Swing and this is what makes the book worth its very reasonable price. The book starts off with a nice introduction to Swing and the MVC architecture. The author then discusses some of the basic Swing classes. This section of the book features a good discussion of panes but like most of this section it leaves you wanting more. The author has an excellent writing style and gives good, clear examples for each of the classes but each topic ends too soon. Also, too many topics are not included in this book. This book could have been an excellent book. If the publisher had abandoned the idea of supplying a reference and had let Dr. Pantham have the entire 800 pages, this would have been a much better book. If you plan on doing a little work with Swing and you're looking for a light introduction, this book may serve that purpose. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Java (Computer program languag    7. Java (Computer program language)    8. Java foundation classes    9. Programming Languages - Java    10. Java & variants    11. Programming languages   

Reviews (3)

An excellent reference
Definitely for the advanced Swing user (or someone who feels they are done with tutorials), I have been finding this book a useful reference. Useful for quick reference
Though this book is not nearly as useful as other Swing books when it comes to learning hoiw things work. It is organized so nicely that referencing things is often faster than it is in the online docs. Not my favorite book, but well done and original. I recommend it only forveterans. Also its the only book that covers all of the Basic PLAF (I wouldhave given it 3 stars if it didn't have this).

Disappointing - doesn't live up to the publicity
I was disappointed by this book. Most of thespace is taken up by a listing of the Swing class types and parameters. Whilst the annotation is useful, and the book is distinctive in it's reference style, theinformation is too focussed on a method by method rather than "how doI do this?" types of questions.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Internet - General    7. Programming Languages - General    8. Programming Languages - Java    9. Java & variants    10. Programming languages   

Editorial Review

Some of the most appealing features of Java programming are the Swing user interface classes in the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) from Sun Microsystems. Read more

Reviews (14)

A really good start
Programming with JFC focuses on the Swing component of the Java programming language.Swing is a toolkit that attempts to simplify and streamline the development of the windowing components, namely the visual components (such as menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, etc.) that are used in GUI-based programs.More information about Swing can be found at the Swing Connection home page at http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/index.html.If you are short on cash, you could glean the bulk of the information provided by this book from the free resources available on-line at the Swing Connection and save yourself nearly fifty dollars. I would buy this book again
I'm new to Swing and Java.This book provided alot of good examples to get me started with Swing and able to produce working programs quickly.My next book purchases will be books that do a better job describing thedetails of Swing and Java in general.

Good overview of Swing components
This book is a pretty thorough review of JFC and the individual components.Familiarity with AWT is recommended to cruise through this book though. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books And Software    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Java (Computer program language)    7. Java foundation classes    8. Programming Languages - General    9. Programming Languages - Java    10. Java & variants    11. Programming languages