I will amplify the author's honest comment that this book is a work in progress. I'm looking forward to the revised edition that will match the current version of the Creator IDE.

Although it was helpful getting started it did not address using feature beyond the basics. Although Sun touts Creator as an easy to use tool, like most of Java it is unecessarily complex. The book just gives an introduction but not much beyond that.

Sun's Java Studio Creator makes use of JavaServer Faces (JSF) to allow visual development similar to the way Microsoft's Visual Studio allows visual development of ASP based sites. It is an easy to use IDE that allows you to drag and drop JSF components, validators, and converters to design a web application. Much of the code required for a web site is automatically generated for you as you visually develop and additional classes can be generated or hand written (depending on their complexity) using the tool. This book will not teach you JSF but it will teach you how to use the IDE and quickly create web applications. This book is a well-written and easy to follow step-by-step tutorial to using this new IDE.

The book starts with a chapter on Java that can be easily ignored. The next chapter gives a quick introduction to the IDE. The authors demonstrate many of the basic techniques and show how to use the visual features to create navigation for a multi-page web site. The third chapter discusses each of the JSF components that are available in the IDE. Chapters four and five demonstrate how to use these components to build a web application. The examples are simple but they show how to integrate the generated code with custom beans (that can also be generated). Chapters six and seven show how to integrate Web Services and databases into your application. Chapter eight looks at internationalization and writing custom validators. The final chapter covers debugging.

If you have a copy of the software and want to utilize it to the fullest then this book is well worth buying. If you don't have the software then look at ISBN 0131499947 to purchase the book and the software together.

Finally Sun has provided us with an easy drag and drop applications builder for Java. Many programmers have learnt the intricacies of coding, but while Java is great for quick manual building, there is still a lot of boilerplate. Many widgets have a lot of properties. And you need to write out a bunch of callbacks and keep track somehow of the overall structure.

Creator lets you do a lot of design easily. Its DND pushes a lot of details into the background. But the UI gives you quick visual access to reading and changing these details.

More importantly, the authors show how Creator is far more than a GUI builder. Many server side applications involve JSPs, Java Beans and hooking up the UI to this back end logic. From the book's starting walkthrough of Creator, it describes a full integration. It has visual tools that show the logic layout as clearly as the UI layout. For example, if you use JSPs, you typically have these interacting with each other in some logic flow that is triggered by user actions. Creator has a Navigation editor that shows visually how these JSPs interconnect. Nothing you could not previously do with pen and paper. But that is the point. Relieves you of that burden. Plus now this Navigation information can be summoned from your application at any time, and always remains consistent with it. Hitherto, you would have to maintain a set of hardcopy diagrams, which are physically separate from the source code.

Pity Sun didn't produce Creator several years ago.

While I have not yet finished reading this book, I can
say that thus far, it appears to be well written.
Interestingly enough, I have the first book written
by this couple nearly 20 years ago, which was also
a very well written book.

Bottom line, this is a useful companion to someone
looking to create web applications with Java Studio
Creator.

In addition to this book, I purchased the "Core JSF" book
at the same time. The differences are quite stark.

If like me, you are also looking for more in depth knowledge
of the technology behind Studio Creator (such as Java Server
Faces), then I would recommend either the JSF specification
itself (from java dot sun dot com) or a book OTHER than
the Core JSF book by Geary and Horstmann).

For roughly one hundred fifty dollars, a developer can
purhase this book, and Sun's Java Studio Creator. Coupled
with these tools, web developers with moderate knowledge
can begin creating web applications, simply and quickly.