Swing Hacks helps Java developers move beyond the basics of Swing, the graphical user interface (GUI) standard since Java 2. If you're a Java developer looking to build enterprise applications with a first-class look and feel, Swing is definitely one skill you need to master. This latest title from O'Reilly is a reference to the cool stuff in Swing. It's about the interesting things you learn over the years--creative, original, even weird hacks--the things that make you say, "I didn't know you could even do that with Swing!" Swing Hacks will show you how to extend Swing's rich component set in advanced and sometimes non-obvious ways. The book touches upon the entire Swing gamut-tables, trees, sliders, spinners, progress bars, internal frames, and text components. Detail is also provided on JTable/JTree, threaded component models, and translucent windows. You'll learn how to filter lists, power-up trees and tables, and add drag-and-drop support. Swing Hacks will show you how to do fun things that will directly enhance your own applications. Some are visual enhancements to make your software look better. Some are functional improvements to make your software do something it couldn't do before. Some are even just plain silly, in print only to prove it could be done. The book will also give you give you a small glimpse of the applications coming in the future. New technology is streaming into the Java community at a blistering rate, and it gives application developers a whole new set of blocks to play with. With its profusion of tips and tricks, Swing Hacks isn't just for the developer who wants to build a better user interface. It's also ideally suited for client-side Java developers who want to deliver polished applications, enthusiasts who want to push Java client application boundaries, and coders who want to bring powerful techniques to their own applications. Whatever your programming needs, Swing Hacks is packed with programming lessons that increase your competency with interface-building tools.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 18 Ratings

Not even worth keeping on the bookshelf... - 2008-03-11
Reviewer Rating:
Lacking some up-to-date information is usually not a problem that impacts most books. You can usually pull out one or two decent tricks, methodologies or pieces of information you didn't know before. This book, however, falls flat on its face.

Filled with completely useless "hacks", use of extremely common knowledge/practices and general lack of content make this book a complete waste. Beginners may find the information interesting, but in terms of use in their professional lives, useless. Advanced users will find that other methodologies and "hacks" out there are much more useful and function much more efficiently.

Aside from the uselessness of the information provided for use within enterprise GUI front-ends, what bothered me most was the inefficiency of the data provided. With some simple tweaking, complete rewrites based on the ideas presented, etc. you can come up with much more efficient and powerful components and component extensions yourselves.

Don't waste your time.

Very useful book - 2009-08-19
Reviewer Rating:
Despite some grumbling to the contrary, these are useful hacks. Many can be mixed and matched to great effect. If all you want to do is built a traditional GUI app, very little will be interesting to you. If you want to make interesting looking and behaving applications this is great source.

Each hack is a standalone in the sense that you don't have to use another one(many go together obviously) to make use of it, and that may be the problem, too many API monkeys can't take a little from here and a little there and come up with something terrific. It doesn't go through the process of creating a nice full featured application, and that is something that seems to be lacking in the Swing book library, but it doesn't make it less useful or relevant.

Each hack is short and clear, no extraneous information that you can get directly from the docs, which is what most books do exclusively. There are issues, sometimes there is missing code in the book(example: the useful hack #34) and sometimes there is missing code in the sample download. This is why it is only 4 stars. Yes many of the hacks seem OS X biased, but that is OK as OS X has a great looking UI, besides, they look right at home in KDE 4. There are a few hacks that don't work, the translucent JFrame hack is worse then flicker, it blinks! Tweaking sleep and drawing times doesn't seem to help much.

One thing this book illustrates is how kludgy Swing and Java really are. Simple things like getting the desktops taskbar size information, dynamically decorating and decorating a JFrame, sorting a JTable are either impossible or take a lot of extra work.

Overall this is a great book and true to its title it is for people looking at learning Swing more in depth and becoming a better and more clever hacker. This book along with basic swing knowledge can help you write great looking and performing applications, and that is always useful.

Useful book - 2009-02-26
Reviewer Rating:
Despite the fact majority of described hacks are on the edge of their usefulness, the book is very useful. After reading you remember what can be done using Swing and what limitations exist. You will also find quite a lot of clever solutions not only related to the Swing itself.

A solid read - 2008-09-30
Reviewer Rating:
This book has some interesting tips and tricks. It would probably be a good read for developers that aren't too deep into the Swing framework, because most of the examples provide quick ways to accomplish various tasks without having to know the swing framework inside and out.

It's Great for solving a lot of problems but isn't recent - 2008-05-10
Reviewer Rating:
It met my test because what I needed to know was easy to find and I was able to make a quick fix while maintaining Java software and I knocked out a couple of problems that way. It was easy to read, a good index and had sample implementations. The only problem I found is that it seems out of date and I would gladly purchase a more recent edition.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Internet/Online
Programming

Sub-Categories:
Internet/Online > Java
Programming > Java
Java > Swing