Core Swing: Advanced Programming

Written as a supplement to the author's Core Java Foundation Classes, Kim Topley's Core Swing: Advanced Programming delves deeply into several important Java topics. Every experienced Java programmer will find very useful techniques for working with Swing controls and other high-level UI features.

The book zeroes in on two aspects of Swing interfaces. First, there are over 500 pages on optimizing your usage of a variety of Swing text controls. The author provides solutions to mimicking native-style operating system support for data validation, numeric input, and special processing with user input. There's also excellent coverage on the extensive support in Swing for loading and displaying HTML. Sections on extending the Swing table control will let you change how table data is displayed and edited (with coverage of custom renderers and cell editors).

In addition, this book explores features in Swing that allow you to carry out advanced user interface operations, such as drag-and-drop functionality and undo support. Throughout this text, the author uses short code excerpts that solve problems and showcase brilliant Swing implementations. By concentrating on strategies and solutions, and not just the Swing APIs, the author shows you not only how to solve particular problems but also the underlying Swing design philosophy, so you can take this library even further in your own programs.

If anything, this text proves once and for all that Swing is ready to take on native operating systems like Windows with its support for advanced user features. This book delivers some really valuable and impossible-to-find information for any experienced Java programmer who needs to do more with Swing. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Extending Swing text controls, text wrapping and scrolling, manipulating text documents, input validation, text attributes, highlighters and carets, custom views, Swing HTML support classes, viewing HTML, editor kits, cascading style sheets and Swing, bi-directional text for international applications, advanced table features in Swing, custom table renderers, table editing and cell editors, drag-and-drop support in Swing, drag sources and drop targets, using tree controls for file information, undo support in Swing.

User review
Very good, rather specialized, advanced book
This book was wisely focused on selected advanced Swing topics, rather than trying to be comprehensive. I suspect Kim Topley could write two or three additional books with a similar level of detail on other advanced Swing topics, and it was sensible not to write 2500 pages all at once.

_If_ the focus topics (everything you might want to know about text components, table cell renderers and editors, drag-and-drop, undo/redo) are of interest to you, you won't find a better text anywhere, explicitly including all the Swing tutorials available on the Web. This is not a Swings basics book, but it _is_ an excellent how-to, and often why-to, book. Lots of code examples, lots of explanation.

Let me repeat: This is not a Swing basics book. The emphasis is not on how to apply the stock JFC components, but rather on how to customize, modify and extend the JFC components. For example, instead of just saying `JFC drag-and-drop support is limited primarily to raw text`, Topley shows you how to implement support for d-d of whatever data types you are interested in. Actual d-d data interchange representations are not discussed, as that is highly platform- and datatype-specific.

User review
Very limited Scope
This book covers only a very few topics:
mainly tables and editors.

If you want to write your own components, data validators, etc, this book has nothing to tell you. If you are curious about traversal, find some other book.

Using the book I was able to figure out tables sufficiently to write streaming autosorting tables and custom renderers. Thankfully there are is plenty of example code which is much more eloquent than the rather rambling text.

User review
It says 'Advanced'
If you are a newby Swing programmer, get OReilly's Java Swing book for all the gory low level details. When you are done with that, jump into this book for 'advanced' information on Swing for doing real applications. The undo chapter alone is outstanding, providing the best explaination of any book I've looked at,,.

User review
Please Read the Whole Title
Several recent reviews of this book seem to be written with a misunderstanding of its scope. As its title says, this book is about advanced Swing programming - it is not intended as an introductory book.

The reviewer who complains about there not being a description of how a table works or which is the row and which is the column when building a TableModel form an Object[][] is perfectly correct to say that it is not covered here - in fact, all of that is completely covered in Core JFC, which *IS* an introductory text. Returning the book might well be appropriate in this case - but only because this is not the book that he should have ordered in the first place.

User review
BOOOO HISSSS,,,,,,,,,, Come on, developers deserve better.
A whole chapter on JTables and not mentioning much about the tables. There is more focus on BigDecimal and Doubles than on how a table works.

Why don't you write this chapter again and talk about. 1. How a Table works. 2. What a TableModel is and how it Works. 3. What is a renderer and why would i need on. 4. Don't WORRY ABOUT CURRENCY, Write about tables.

Also, if you want to make a practical example.

DON'T USE: Object[][] as the basis for your table without explaining which array is thr row ant which is the column.

Build a custom object like one that might be used in the REAL WORLD and write about that.

class CostElement { short id; String name; int Price; }

now define a table full of CostElement[] objects. Now THAT, would be practical.

This book does not adequatley address the relevant topics to make it meaningful. think I'm going to return my book. It is of no use to me.

Terry