The JFC Swing Tutorial is back, fully revised and updated to include the latest revisions to the JFC Swing API and the Java™ 2 platform. In this book, authors and Java experts Kathy Walrath, Mary Campione, Alison Huml, and Sharon Zakhour—working closely with the Sun Microsystems Swing team—explore the ins and outs of creating GUIs with Swing components.

This task-oriented, example-driven tutorial allows you to create user interfaces that work without change on multiple platforms, appearing and performing as well as or better than native interfaces. Leveraging the full power of the latest edition of the Java 2 platform, the authors bring the art of GUI creation to life with content new to this edition. This includes an easy-to-use tabbed reference section, new introductory chapters, and coverage of newer features such as JSpinner, JFormattedTextField, JProgressBar, mouse wheel support, the rearchitected focus subsystem, and improved support for drag and drop.

Coverage includes:

• Introductory material for developers getting started with Swing, including sections on basic components such as text fields, labels, and buttons, as well as on using images
• The latest advice from the Swing team about thread safety
• Advanced Swing material, including changing key bindings, manipulating the focus, using data models, and adding painting code that uses the powerful Java 2D™ API
• How-to discussions on using individual components and containers, including advanced components such as tables, trees, and text editors
• Over 150 complete, working code examples

For the novice or experienced Java developer looking to create robust, powerful, and visually stunning GUIs, The JFC Swing Tutorial, Second Edition, is an indispensable tutorial and reference.

Amazon.com 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. 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 and the organization of classes in both applets and applications, as well as useful high-level classes like frames and scroll panes. 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 optimizing repainting 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.