The JFC Swing Tutorial: A Guide to Constructing GUIs (2nd Edition)

Description

Features

The task–oriented and example–driven tutorial to JFC Swing –– now fully updated and revised!

° The perfect book to learn the ins and outs of JFC and Swing

° Fully understand how to build GUIs using JFC and Swing

° Written by lead writer on the Swing team and best–selling author of The Java Tutorial –– Kathy Walrath

° The previous edition sold more than 17,000 copies

This volume of The Java(TM) Tutorial tells you how to write GUIs that use the Java(TM) Foundation Classes (JFC) "Swing" components. You can use the information in this book both with the Java 2 platform (Standard Edition, v 1.2 and compatible versions) and with JDK(TM) 1.1 (with additional JFC 1.1 libraries).

The online form of The Java(TM) Tutorial has covered the Swing components since their first public early access release––Swing 0.2, which came out in July, 1997. Through the many early access releases, the Tutorial kept pace with API changes and additions. Readers and reviewers kept us on our toes, helping us improve each page tremendously. However, readers often requested a printed version of the online material. This book is that version. About This Book‘s Structure

The hyperlinked origins of this book may be evident as you read it. For instance, underlined phrases throughout this book mimic online links. A link to material within this book is followed by the appropriate page number. A link to material outside this book, such as to the JDK API documentation, is accompanied by a footnote that contains a URL. Other evidence of this book‘s online origin can be found on the first page of each lesson and major section, which provides the URL where the lesson or section can be found in the online Tutorial.

You might be wondering why we use the terms "trails" and "lessons." We know that people don‘t learn linearly. People learn by posing a problem, solving it, uncovering other problems, solving them, and learning information as the need arises. Our original vision for the online Tutorial was to encourage and enable this type of thinking and learning. We envisioned a mountain of ski trails, where at any junction, a reader could choose the most interesting or appropriate path at that time. But we also needed some sort of structure and organization, so we created a two–tiered hierarchy: trails at the top level and lessons within them. This book consists of the largest Tutorial trail, Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing. Acknowledgments

We would like to thank every member of the Swing project. They‘re a great team of people who do excellent work and are fun to be around. For help with general technical issues, we depended on two people. Hans Muller, the Swing project lead, provided not only reviews of individual sections, but also gave sound advice and help with overall issues. Amy Fowler reviewed individual sections and, as someone with broad knowledge of both the AWT and Swing, helped us to correctly describe such architectural features as graphics support.

Reviewers of individual how–to sections include Philip Milne, who gave masterful reviews of the table and list portions and supplied the sorter example. Georges Saab reviewed the menu– and action–related discussions. Scott Violet provided invaluable help with the text and tree pages. Jeff Dinkins reviewed several sections and also provided quality–of–life enhancements such as tile samples and miniature phone lists.

Earl Johnson and Peter Korn, from the accessibility team, gently prodded us into covering accessibility well. Their demos, coaching, and careful review of the accessibility section helped us improve it greatly.

It‘s always a pleasure working with Pat Chan, whose early review of this book helped us determine its scope and approach.

Other reviewers and Swing team members that we‘d like to thank include Mike Albers, Tim Prinzing, Tom Santos, Steve Wilson, Rich Schiavi, Tom Ball, Jim Graham, and Hania Gajewska. Rick Levenson, the original manager of the Swing project, was very supportive. We look forward to working with the new manager, Howard Rosen.

Alison Huml performed production duties on this book, juggling coursework, paid work, RSI, and a household move. Without her, this book wouldn‘t exist. She also drew most of the pictures in this book, with the exception of the cartoony ones, which were drawn by Kathy‘s sweetheart Nathan.

Jennifer Ball helped us at crucial points, doing such tasks as checking API tables and code snippets, and converting graphics examples.

Lisa Friendly, our manager and series editor, gave us the freedom and support necessary to do our work––and enjoy it. Stans Kleijnen and Jon Kannegaard, respectively the director of product engineering and the vice president of the Java platform, also contributed to an atmosphere that let everyone do their best.

We‘d also like to thank the team at Addison–Wesley: Mike Hendrickson, Sarah Weaver, Evelyn Pyle, Jacquelyn Young, Marina Lang, and Julie DeBaggis. They‘ve been a pleasure to work with.

Finally, thank you to our readers.

0201433214P04062001 ––This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Backcover Copy

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.

Author Bios

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.