<pre>
Author/s : Rob Warner, Robert Harris
Publisher : Apress
Category : Miscellaneous Java
Review by : Lasse Koskela
Rating : 9 horseshoes</pre>
I won't be needing another SWT book in a while... "The Definitive Guide to SWT and JFace" is indeed definitive and proved to be a nearly perfect choice for starting my journey inside Eclipse's much hyped GUI toolkit(s).
The book starts from scratch, explaining the history and motivation for a different approach to a GUI toolkit (SWT's native peer widgets vs. the emulated widgets of Swing, etc.), proceeding to your typical Hello World app with a single window and a single label, and ends up covering most everything I can think of needing to build even a relatively complex GUI using SWT and JFace. The book is a huge tome, partly because it includes listings of all the various methods provided by the classes introduced along the way. On one hand, it's a good thing because the book is pretty much all you need (i.e. a decent replacement for Google
, and on the other hand, the book would be a lot more pleasant to read if you'd drop a few hundred pages...
One thing I specifically liked about the book is that the authors have done a good job employing screenshots where needed -- especially in the chapter about layouts.
Anyway, I'm giving this book 9 horseshoes and will definitely recommend it for anyone looking to learn SWT. I'm not a GUI developer and the book works for me as an introduction, tutorial, and a reference.
More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk
