Rating: 
Summary: thumbs down
Review: When this book came out it was poorly written. Today, it is both poorly written and out of date. Many examples do not work without changes, either due to poor editing or due to minor changes to the swing API. Worse, most of the examples do a bad job of demonstrating the subject matter, and are bad examples of how to write java code. Avoid this book like the plague. O'Reilly used to be a publisher that I trusted - not any more. Simply read the errata on their site, that alone will convince you not to buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best Swing books available
Review: For visual programming, Swing is a vast improvement over the AWT. Using Swing you can create virtually any user interface. At the same time, Swing is much more complex and contains far more components than the AWT. This book provides an in-depth introduction into the complexities of Swing. The authors start with a discussion of some of the features of Swing and the Model-View-Controller architecture which helps to make Swing so much more powerful than the AWT. The authors then discuss some of the simpler Swing objects (JLabel, JButton) leading us into a deeper understanding of the Swing architecture and preparing us for the more complex objects that follow. Each Swing class (JLabel, JInternalFrame, JDialog, JTree, and more) is explained in detail with numerous examples for each class. As the topics become more complex, the authors spend more time on the topic and provide more examples. The authors spend 6 chapters explaining the Swing text framework and make this complex topic almost simple to understand. The authors are not content to merely explain how to use the Swing classes but they spend time showing us how to create our own objects derived from the Swing classes. Java Swing is a huge book (more than 1,200 pages), especially by O'Reilly standards, but there are no pages wasted on a "quick reference". The authors have provided us with a well written, complete, easy to understand, and ultimately indispensable guide to Java Swing.
Rating:
Summary: very disappointing book
Review: This book have too many simple descriptions about swing APIs, so it more like a manual than a book on swing. There are neither in-depth explanations about swing nor practical hints on swing programming in this book. You can find almost half the contents of this book by reading the documentation of Java Swing. I have to say this is a useless book for programming with swing.
Rating: 
Summary: stay away from this one
Review: This book attempts to teach you all the underlying gory details of swing technology and also provide a quick description of every single class and method that can be called. Explaining the underlying technology is usually a good thing, but add that to author's desire to provide a reference for everything in swing leaves no room for much practical discussions. As a result, the author glosses over some the most important swing classes and methods, so in the end, your not sure which ones to use. The examples are OK, but they are few and far between. I found this book useful only once or twice in 1 1/2 years of swing programming. I bought this book mostly to learn JTable and JList, but didn't find much in the way of practical information. Many of the classes they describe in detail, will probably never be needed in day to day programming, but might be useful if you are developing your own customized versions of swing classes. So I would say, buy this book only if you are already an intermediate to advanced swing programmer who wants to explore the underlying technology.
Rating:
Summary: Terse style of O'Reilly fails again...
Review: At first, O'Reilly's Swing book seems packed with good information and useful examples. But after using it as a reference, I found the examples are pretty much useless for real-world problem-solving, or they just plain do not work. The terse style usually found in many O'Reilly books fails woefully to explain or illuminate a developer of the concepts behind Swing, which is a huge subject matter. The copy I purchased was ripped to shreds out of frustration and the sense that I got ripped off. I am now looking for Swing book that actually has information relevent to the real world instead of the interesting, but purely academic exercises presented in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but I like Zukowski's better
Review: I glanced at this book and John Zukowski's _Definitive Guide_, and decided at the time that they were more or less the same, and that a serious Java Swing programmer should own at least one, but not both. After having bought both books (my Zukowski was in the World Trade Center), I've decided that I was very wrong in my assessment. This book is not bad, but Zukowski's goes into much more detail and provides better sample code, especially in the section on JTables.
Rating:
Summary: Only a fair book
Review: The book not too much more than a rehash of the Javadocs for Swing. For the beginner, not enough example and explanation. The authors also frequently assume a familiarity with AWT - a bad assumption. For beginners, Sun's on-line Swing tutorial is much much better.For advanced programmers, this book is not much better than Sun's Javadoc. Most programmers will use the Javadoc since this book is not laid out well. Also, the binding on the book comes apart pretty quickly.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for Swing users of all levels
Review: This book is a perfect tutorial of all Swing features and advantages. It offers detailed description of Swing components and their properties and also explains how Swing works "under a cover". A user can also find lots of good code examples. The only reason why I give if four stars instead of five is that the book contains no CD.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to O'Reilly's usual quality
Review: Unlike most O'Reilly books (or at least, non-Java O'Reilly books), this one suffers from severe problems with editorial quality. The most severe problems with the book are purely content based - it doesn't have an intuitive layout, the index is poorly constructed, and it repeatedly throws out possibilities without explaining the hows. There are also severe problems with the after-purchase website support. There are over 11 pages of errors that the authors haven't deigned to address yet in the O'Reilly error queue for this page. Although some are understandable - changes made by Sun in Java updates, for example, are beyond an author's control - others are fundamental. In general, I would suggest the tutorials on Sun's website over this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Swing's on the speed dialer
Review: With O'reilly books, it's easy to see the fine line between the Men and the Boys. Don't read this book if you're a little boy.
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