Covering Eclipse's new capability for building graphical user interfaces with version 3.0, the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and JFace, this guide demonstrates how these award-winning tools have received broad support for creating desktop applications. Theory and practical examples reveal how to build GUIs that combine the look and feel of native interfaces with the platform independence of Java. This guide also shows how SWT makes use of the widgets provided by the operating system and describes how these components can be associated with events, containers, and graphics. With this knowledge, programmers can build fully featured user interfaces that communicate directly with the underlying platform. JFace's ability to simplify and organize the process of GUI design is then demonstrated, enabling developers to modify and adapt components, and separate their information from their appearance.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 8 Ratings

poorly strucured and organized - 2006-01-15
Reviewer Rating:
"SWT/JFace in Action" proceeds to build a monolithic UI "application" consisting of a dozen or so widgets. Other than creating the widgets and putting them into an application, the book has little else to offer. Many chapters include tables of descriptions copied verbatim from the SWT/JFace Javadocs, with no additional verbage provided. There is very little coverage of event handling, or layouts. After presenting pages of vacuous descriptions like "setActionDefinitionID(String) - Sets an Action definition identifier" (p.73), each chapter concludes with the absurd statement "Now you are an expert." It would be funny if you had not just wasted $30 on the book.

The silliest chapter is that of image-handling which contains a bizarre program to generate and save animated GIFs as files (why is this important to UIs?). After plodding through the process of generating images pixel-by-pixel (does anyone generate images pixel-by-pixel? doesnt everyone use methods to draw lines, arcs, elipses, & polygons?) the authors present a program to produce animated GIFs as files. The code contains strings of bytes (e.g., new byte[] {56, -67, 98, 54, -4, 2 }) with no explanation. My impression is that the author had this program on his PC and could not think of anything else to do with it but to include it in the book. The highlight is when the animated GIF is placed into the main application and the author comments that unfortunately, SWT does not provide functionality to animate it. LOL.

I recommend that you read the Javadocs before you buy this book. If you need additional help, look for a reference other than this book.

Small wonder - 2005-02-09
Reviewer Rating:
As many people know by now, SWT and JFace are the GUI libraries used to create Eclipse, the popular open-source Java IDE. As fewer people know, these libraries can be used to build other applications as well. This book will teach you how. Its 13 chapters and four fat appendices give you all the information you'll need to create your own GUIs using this exciting new technology.

JFace is built on top of SWT just as Swing is built on AWT. Most books, quite naturally, discuss these layers separately. This book is unusual because it discusses SWT and JFace simultaneously. This is more useful for the reader as she gains an appreciation for all her options at once.

At barely over 450 pages, this is a comparatively small book on this large topic. It doesn't feel like anything is missing, though, although sometimes it feels a little cramped. The book is jam-packed with useful information and lots of code. For a book on graphics, however, there are curiously few screen shots. This, and some odd organizational choices (especially the relegation of GEF to an appendix,) are my only complaints about this otherwise serviceable work.

Great fundamentals on JFace frameworks - 2005-05-04
Reviewer Rating:
This book is well written. The narrative flows conversationally and keeps your interest throughout the chapter. This book gives you a fundamental understanding of the architecture of SWT and especially of JFace. It puts the pieces together for you. Whether you are writing desktop gui applications, Eclipse plug-ins, or Eclipse Rich Client Platforms (RCP) applications, this book is an excellent starting point. Unfortunately, the chapter on RCP was full of errors and the application example did not run. But all the other book's examples ran without any errors. And its excellent explanations of the JFace frameworks make the book worth having.

A worthy addition to my bookcase. - 2005-03-27
Reviewer Rating:
To be honest, I only picked this book up because I like having lots of computer books in my bookcase, and I like having as many references on hand as possible. I really didn't expect anyone to know more on the subject than I did.

While I was mostly right, the book did manage to discuss the topic with surprising lucidity without losing a bit of detail. Not a small feat considering the subject matter. It also manages to be very lean, not wasting any time on theory or conceited tangents that just tend to waste the readers valuable time.

The only problem I had with the book is the cover. While programming books are not known for their stylish leather binding or gilded pages, I'd prefer to have a book that didn't look so much like "chicken soup for the GUI" on my shelf.

I recommend the book for anyone interested in working with SWT/JFace.

Poor reference - 2007-10-23
Reviewer Rating:
This text may work as a simple introduction to SWT and JFace, but it is a VERY poor reference material for the minutae that is what makes SWT and JFace challenging to use. I would NOT recommend it to anyone.

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