Swing Second Edition (Manning)

[Marcelo Ortega]

Does anyone recommend this book to me? Are there any more updated books which covers the same topics (Layout Managers, etc.)?

Is this book a little out dated?

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Marzo.

[Marcelo Ortega]

Or would this one be better?

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

Can anyone recommend one for me please?

[Pat Hays]

Hello Marzo

I can recommend a program called JFrameBuilder. I found it very useful it design my interfaces and then it generates the code for various Swing Components.

It shows the effect of setting each property of various Swing Components, just by the current changes. Then you will can the code immediately. Not like others I've found which hide it away. for example, If you want to know how to show an image on your interface, or how to use JTabbedPane properly etc. anyway I think its worth a look.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Pat Hays:
Hello Marzo

I can recommend a program called JFrameBuilder. I found it very useful it design my interfaces and then it generates the code for various Swing Components.

It shows the effect of setting each property of various Swing Components, just by the current changes. Then you will can the code immediately. Not like others I've found which hide it away. for example, If you want to know how to show an image on your interface, or how to use JTabbedPane properly etc. anyway I think its worth a look.

However, it won't teach you how to use Swing as Marzo obviously wants to. Pat, I've told you privately in the past. Now I tell you out here in public. Stop selling your product outside of the Blatent Advertising forum.

[Tim McGuire]

I can recommend the book. My two best resources for learning Swing have been the Manning book and this forum.

The Manning book acts as both a reference and a step by step tutorial. Lots of solid code. One thing I especially like are the UI Guidelines sprinkled throughout the book.

[miguel lisboa]

Is this book a little out dated?

its updated to the (then) new java 1.4; anyway you can have a look at the whole book and code.

i have the book and i'm not disapointed: great code, clean and clear explanations; i use it as a help when i need something in particular

[Tad Dicks]

Personally I don't care for the book too much. Its extremely dry, and can be rather dense making searching through it as a reference sometimes difficult and just reading through it to be painful (though this is all personal opinion). I would prefer something simliliar to the Head First series if I could find it. That being said it is rather dense and large so there is a lot of information there, I only wish it delved into the text api more.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Personally, I have never ran across a book for learning Swing that was much more than a wordy, convoluted version of Sun's own Swing tutorial. Between that, the API, and Javaranch, I learned everything I needed to know about piecing together basic Swing applications.

Once you get that down, then go by yourself a copy of Desktop Java Live (be sure and get the EBook so you get all the updates) which will show you how to use all those wonderful 3rd party libraries to really enhance your Swing application as well as how to put those pieces together the right way instead of forcing it.