The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs

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.

Kathy Walrath is a senior technical writer on the Swing team at Sun Microsystems. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Kathy wrote extensively about Unix, Mach, and NextStep. Since 1993, Kathy has been writing specifications and how-to guides for the Java platform. Mary Campione was formerly a senior technical writer at Sun Microsystems, where she started writing about the Java platform in 1995. Mary graduated from California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, with a B.S. in Computer Science and has worked as both a technical writer and programmer.

Alison Huml is a technical writer at Sun Microsystems, where she joined The Java Tutorial team in 1997 and also works with the Security team. Alison received her B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently pursuing her master's degree in Computer Science at Mills College.

Sharon Zakhour, the Java Tutorial team lead, has worked at Sun as a senior technical writer for seven years. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Computer Science and has worked as a programmer, developer support engineer, and technical writer for more than 20 years.