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

Effective Java Programming Language Guide

Reference

The Java(TM) Developers Almanac 1.4, Volume 1: Examples and Quick Reference (4th Edition)

Format: Paperback
Author: Patrick Chan
ReleaseDate: 25 March, 2002
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Rating:

Great Book
It's very complete. It's a very useful book, specially when you need to do some code but you don't have time to spend over the web.

Essential Java Reference
The first section includes simple examples of common uses of the java packages. I picked this book up a couple months ago and can't imagine how I got along without it before. I find this extremely useful. There are realms in Java where the intricacies often slip my mind, particularly in java. io, and the small examples of these packages shown in section 1 serve as a perfect reminder of how exactly to accomplish my task.

Section 2 is the meat of the book and includes a reference to the classes and their members. This is similar to the online API, but lacking the descriptions for the methods / classes. This is strictly a quick reference of the methods, their arguments, return types and modifiers, and the variables belonging to a class. For a description of every method, use the online API. Personally though, I find this reference quicker to use than the online API when searching for a particular class. It probably comes down to personal preference, though.

Sections 3 and 4 I honestly haven't found a need for. The first two sections alone are worth the (relatively) [inexpensive] price of the book.

For reference, my qualifications include Sun Java Programmer Certification 1. 4 (Passed with an 86%), Graduated Magna Cum Laude from UMass Dartmouth with a Computer Science degree.

An impressive achievement
4 GUI classes into a hefty 1000+ pages. This book condenses the vastness of Java 1. It's divided into 4 sections. Part 1 contains examples of usage of the different classes, with a focus on how to accomplish something specific, from creating a JLabel component to playing MIDI audio. Part 2 contains detailed information about the classes themselves, and contains references to code examples from Part 1 to see how the class is used in code. This is essentially the documentation that SUN's website provides, but in my view, it's more condensed and the references to code are a bonus.

Part 3 contains topics on the transition of Java from 1. 0 to its current incarnation, detailing deprecated classes, new classes, etc. Part 4 is the cross-reference section, where if you know the name of the method, but not the class that contains that method, you can simply look it up. There's much more than just methods, though; subclasses, descendants, fields, and "extended by"'s are also some of the details here.

This book is quite an impressive achievement, and I hope to get my hands on Volume 1 sometime soon.