Rating: 
Summary: No way to learn Swing
Review: Forget this book as ones introduction to Swing. Rely on Sun's tutorial for that. But as a reference this book describes everything, and in a much more coherent way than the Javadocs ever do. Example programs (downloadable from the Net) clarified many issues for me. Only real problem is finding where the answers are -- the book is huge and the index doesn't seem to help. All said, I haven't had a reason to buy another Swing book, and this is after a year.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough, depth and breadth
Review: This is my first review ever and the only reason I am taking time to do this is to give credit where credit is due. I am surprised that some of the reviews are 1* - it is in-depth, covers a lot of ground, well organized, excellent class diagrams and examples. Intermediate to advanced. The best one for swing. - from a software architect
Rating: 
Summary: OK not the best book on swing
Review: OK but there are lots of better books on swing. The *book* is Geary's Graphic Java but at 1600 pages it is more of a reference then something you'll want to read-it's just *too* big. On the other hand, I just got Zukowski's Swing book and it seems really excellent - much more manageable then Geary and more up to date then Eckstein. Of course, the best situation would be if there was a new edition of Core JFC -none of the code runs in that anymore although the changes needed aren't hard-I learned swing from that book!
Rating:
Summary: it's ok
Review: It is good to use as a reference when using swing, but it does a poor job, overwhelming the reader who is just a beginer.
Rating:
Summary: Wished it had more tutorial
Review: I'm forced to agree with the review below. This book should have spent less time documenting the entire text package and more time teaching us about what we can and cannot extend outside of the javax.swing.text package. For a reference its pretty good, but it borders on having material that will probably never be used.
Rating:
Summary: A very good overview and 'How-to' for Java Swing
Review: I have found this book to be very clear and concise in working through the whole Swing framework. I needed to be an instant 'Swinger' for a company-critical Swing project and I feel I am well on my way. The one thing that is lacking is something to guide us around the numerous Java bugs in Swing and browser-dependent issues.
Rating:
Summary: Explaining everything isn't always a good thing.
Review: There is a lot to know about Swing -- a ton. It's a hazard in writing about it to render so much information in a tedious way, and this book fell victim to it. Every stone of Swing the authors could think to turn is, I am sure, turned. For Pete's sake, this book is longer than Unix Power Tools, and that book represents two decades of Unix experiences! I've had this book for six months and I'm still trying to pick through all the method, class, and interface descriptions to find the kernels of real insight. The book does have them, but you have to wade in deep to get one. I would rather have a well-organized collection of insights to guide exploration, and a separate reference section; this book mostly lists and explains. I can't stay awake for it. The concepts are important. Plenty of examples are important. With those things firmly in hand, you can point out exceptions or substantive variations on rules, focussing on major ideas. I have no doubt this book was an exhausting effort; the style reflects it.
Rating:
Summary: Great for starting w/ Swing when already experienced w/java
Review: When I started converting AWT stuff to Swing stuff I just used sun's api docs and tutorial. But when I started getting into more difficult areas like table layout, multiple document interfaces, etc., I decided to buy a book. I bought this one and have been very happy with it. I skimmed through most of it a while back and now I use it as a reference, looking up whatever topic I am having trouble with and going through the examples. For me it has been invaluable.
Rating:
Summary: This book was OK.
Review: This book was ok. A book cannot be everything to everybody. This is not for a beginner. But I do recommend it for advanced users. I enjoyed the fact that the book was very comprehensive. There were some small errors- no big deal. One example: I started about 3/4 into the book. I ran into BasicWindowMonitor(); which was defined way back in chapter 1. I should have guessed. But I couldn't find the author's code. BasicWindowMonitor() wasn't in the index. I emailed O'Reilly with this issue. The publisher is first class. They had great tech support. They directed me to the proper page and apologized. Also, the publisher has all the software code from the book well organized on their web site. The authors picked a good publisher to support their product. That should be a factor for every reader when purchasing technical books. In summary, this is a book for the advanced JAVA programmer. If you are one, you probably should have it on your desk.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly formatted API with too few examples and screen shots.
Review: I returned this book: I already had it in the form of javadoc-generated api specs. Well, it did provide different information than the API specs, but I found it poorly organized and formatted. The bottom-up approach, as one reviewer put it, did me no good. I really would rather know what a JTable is before a JTableColumn. For the reasons stated above the book was not much use as reference material either. To the author's credit, he apparently got the book published very quickly in terms of Swing 1.1's birthday, so at one point it probably was the best Swing book around, but now you can save your money and buy another book.
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