Jfc And Swing

Programming with JFC

Format: Paperback
Author: Scott R. Weiner
ReleaseDate: 21 April, 1998
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Rating:

A really good start
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. Programming with JFC focuses on the Swing component of the Java programming language.) 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.

While Java itself allows programs to be written once for different platforms, Swing components can be designed in such a way that they will execute without modification on any kind of computer with the identical look and feel of the operating system.

As an example, when you create a program with Swing for Windows 95, it will have the look and feel of an application written specifically for Windows 95. When you run the same program under Solaris, it runs like an application written explicitly for Solaris.

Programming with JFC begins with an overview of Swing programming and Swing specific component. The authors detail the difference between what the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) offers as opposed to the Swing-based model-view-controller (MVC) architecture. More precisely, Swing sits on top of a number of the AWT API's.

The majority of the book details the features set of Swing, from its user interface classes, to its controls and implementation. The authors start with simple controls before moving onto the more detailed issues of advanced controls such as trees and tables.

The book comes with a CD-ROM (naturally) that includes numerous examples, source code and a library of ready-to-use GUI components. Also, similar material is also available via Swing Connection.

Overall, the book provides an excellent introduction to JFC. While it is not a definitive or comprehensive guide to Swing, it does cover most of its important aspects.

I would buy this book again
This book provided alot of good examples to get me started with Swing and able to produce working programs quickly. I'm new to Swing and Java. My next book purchases will be books that do a better job describing the details of Swing and Java in general.

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