Swing, Second Edition

Swing Hacks (Hacks)

The Definitive Guide to Java Swing, Third Edition (Definitive Guide)

Jfc And Swing

The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs, Second Edition

Format: Paperback
Author: Kathy Walrath
ReleaseDate: 27 February, 2004
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Rating:

I Second Thomas Duff's Review
But then I read Thomas Duff's review; I became redundant. 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. My recommendation is to read Mr. Duff's excellent review---knowing that I agree with every word of it.

great potential but poor 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 book has a great potential to be instructive, however, i give it a one star because it fails miserably in the delivery. 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.
The book has great potential. For me, i would rather see the full examples at the end of each chapter or at the end of each lesson where the code snippets reside. This would be more helpful to me as i could study the full code without having to go to the CD or its copy in my drive and navigate through the way nested tree to get to each example. Thus one star.

Second edition is great
It looks suitable for learning Swing (I'm already fairly proficient) except for beginners to GUIs. This tutorial is well laid out and thorough. It's also well organized as a reference work. It's much easier to understand than "Java Swing" from O'Reilly.

Of course the "down side" is that all the material is available online for free. So as an individual you can judge -- if the free online version is suitable for you then go for it. If you want something for your bookshelf or something you can write on and add bookmarks, well then shell out the money for the book. A CD in the back contains all the examples, so you won't need to go online for anything.

Ironically, unlike some earlier reviews (of the first edition) I feel the book is now better organized than the website.