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The Book and the "Proper Way"

 
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I have a couple of swing books and they are "ok". The problem is both books take different approaches when coding GUI's. What I want to know is, is your book just another "Here's a JFrame, here's how a JMenu works, bla bla" or does your book cover the "right" way to construct a gui?
I know that Swing is designed as MVC but does your book cover creating a GUI using the MVC design pattern?
 
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Originally posted by Gregg Bolinger:
...or does your book cover the "right" way to construct a gui?
I know that Swing is designed as MVC but does your book cover creating a GUI using the MVC design pattern?


That's exactly the kind of Swing book I'd be interested in as well. The problem with most books I've glanced at is that they use too simple examples to bring out all the ugliness of the chosen implementation pattern. It's all so simple when you've got only one panel class, one model class, etc. but most books don't even try to tackle structuring the code for bigger GUIs.
 
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No, we don't cover the "right" way to design an app. The Swing team is aware of the need for a blueprint, and they are working on some recommendations. It's going to take a while, unfortunately. When there's any news on this front, it'll be posted on javadesktop.org.
 
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I am in a similar situation of having to build my first Swing app which is reasonably complex.
If there are not currently any blueprints for the "right way" can anyone point me at any resources that I can use tactically to help me meet my requirements that is past the "this is a JFrame, this is a blah blah.... " type examples.
Cheers,
Kim.
 
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Should I send you guys my small but a bit complex SWING/AWT application
,which I made for RealEstate guy, with source code?

Maki Jav
 
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Originally posted by Maki Jav:
Should I send you guys my small but a bit complex SWING/AWT application
,which I made for RealEstate guy, with source code?


I guess there would be many people in this forum who would appreciate your source code as long as you've got the permission to redistribute it...
 
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I too would love to see a book that covers both "proper" design and "proper" implementation. I'm teaching a class next year on GUI programming, and I have no idea what I'll use for a textbook. I may end up ordering both a design book and a Java/Swing book, but the students don't like spending that much on textbooks. I used the Olsen user-interfaces book a few years ago for a similar class, and I liked its balance of design and implementation, but it hasn't been updated for Swing (or even Java 1.1, IIRC!); is there a reasonably up-to-date book that does the job?
 
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Agree 100% with the proper designing/coding swing app book request (like everybody).
I do base some medium complex app on some ideas I extracted from black mamba example on www.onjava.com and especially Carsten Lentzschs looks demo (http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/looks/index.html) -> Looks is great anyway. Have also found design of the small demo app interesting from a pure using-swing-properly standpoint. It does help a lot.
A whole book by some people with deeper real world experience in designing/coding more complex swing apps would be great.
Does anybody know other good web resources about the topic?
[ April 28, 2004: Message edited by: Axel Janssen ]
 
Gregg Bolinger
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I think Kathy hit the nail on the head with this statement:
The Swing team is aware of the need for a blueprint, and they are working on some recommendations
So in essence there is no right or wrong way. There is just the way it gets done. And that is the problem.
Does anybody know other good web resources about the topic?
If I did, I wouldn't need a book.
 
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the need of blueprints is definitively there. However keep in mind when you are coding that a sort of MVC pattern is still very usefull. Keep your model, controller and view seperate. If U use an IDE to create a swing app U will see things like
JPanel panel1 = new JPane....
Jpanel panel2 = new JPanel...
so the variables are numbered and it will be just impossible to maintain.
so far for a blueprint they would be handy, but keep your own code clean in absence of them
baz
 
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