Rating: 
Summary: The Only Swing Book You Should Buy!!!
Review: I have 2 books, Core Graphic Java vol 2 and this book. I have this book to gather dust for some time. I have read review on the Core Graphic Java book and i thought it's a good time to buy one and update myself on Swing. I find it tough to read Core Graphic Java since it doesn't explain much. I managed to pick up the O'Reilly swing book again and find it is much easier to read than the Core Graphic book. Overall, it's good. If you don't mind the outdated import statement in the examples, it should be fine and good to start with. This just reinforce the ideal to me that almost all O'Reilly books are worth every single cents i spent on them.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe previous bad reviews
Review: This book is excellent and is really meant for serious devlopers. Its too bad that the screening process for reviews allows such ridiculous comments to get through though. It is true, though, that if you are looking for SIMPLE examples then you are better off with the Java Tutorial... but only if you are a beginner.
Rating: 
Summary: The worst book among the books about Java Swing
Review: This is by far most useless book among the books about Java Swing. It does not explain the concepts well. It doesn't serve as a reference well. The example are not good either. Overall, this book makes the developers completely confused. You are not going to waste your money, nature's resource (trees for making papers for this book), and most importantly your time. Go to SUN's web site and grap the SWing tutorial and Java 2 API reference. Together they will serve you 1000 times better than this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: This book is a great reference to Swing. It goes into great depth and gives examples on how to use most of the components. This book is a must have for Java programmers using Swing!
Rating:
Summary: Very Thorough
Review: Once again, O'Reilly doesn't skimp out on the hard stuff. This book really comes in handy when you need to see how the guts of this stuff works.
Rating:
Summary: Must have book for Swing
Review: This book covers Swing, starting with simpler components, but never gives up until covering the more interesting and useful parts of java.swing--trees and tables, as well as the interfaces used for the construction of their custom rendering and editing components
Rating: 
Summary: Badly organised
Review: This book provides additional information over the Sun doc. However it is very difficult to follow due to the poorly organised.
Rating:
Summary: good reference, goes well beyond javadocs
Review: This book has been well reviewed by others, but for once I actually read a programming book cover to cover (on vacation), so I wanted to comment.This is the first book on Swing that I have read, though perhaps the 10th on Java, and I have been using Swing since the first beta was available. I think the authors should be commended for really examining each class that is presented, and the sample programs to exercise the "little" classes really show good preparation. I think the size of the sample code is perfect to explain a concept without getting bogged down in the details of a toy application. The book is organized in a "bottom up" fashion, so the TableColumn class is explained before JTable (for example). This provides consistant explanations, but it does mean deferring the motivation for learning something until the end. The biggest problem is with the Text/Editor classes. Here there are 200 pages of preliminary information before you get to JEditorPane, and then the authors stop and say the class is too buggy to explain. I can't blame the authors for JDK problems, but I think a "top down" explanation might work better with this very complex set of classes. On the other hand, if we ever do get a version of JEditorPane that can display HTML without throwing exceptions, these chapters will provide good background material. I learned things from almost every chapter, it is a very good reference.
Rating:
Summary: Good reference and guide to Swing
Review: With the introduction of the Swing graphical toolkit to Java 1.2, developers now have the freedom to write applications with rich graphical user interfaces (GUI). Swing gives Java applications the professional edge that has long been shared by their C++, VB & Delphi counterparts, and goes further with a huge range of new components and controls, and customizable "look-and-feels". But while Swing may be the way of the future for developers, its a steep learning curve because of the complexity of the Swing toolkit. That's where "Java Swing", published by O'Reilly, comes in. Java Swing, at a whopping 1200+ pages, is a fantastic reference that you'll keep within arms reach as you program in Swing. But the book is more than just an API reference - its a combined tutorial and book of examples. Aside from the first few chapters, which provide a basic grounding for the rest of the book, you can skip from chapter to chapter as your needs dictate. It covers all the major component groups, as well as providing useful examples and code snippets. My one complaint about this title is that it appears to have covered the entire swing library, and in doing so the authors tried to put just too many topics into it. Perhaps it needs to be split into two volumes, but while working through the book as part of a programming project, I found that there were some areas where a more thorough treatment should have been given (in particular, the chapter on trees which provides not enough detail, and only very simple examples). That said, "Java Swing" is a fantastic resource, both as a reference and an overview/tutorial of Swing, and is the best Swing book available to-date (as of February 1999).
Rating:
Summary: The most informative reference available
Review:
Pavel Vorobiev and I are currently finishing up an 'advanced' Swing book consisting mainly of examples ("Swing", Manning publications). We have referenced the Swing source code nonstop. Apart from this, we feel that Java Swing is the best Swing reference money can buy. This book is not an API docs dump. It is a high quality reference book for GUI developers who are prepared to do their job professionaly, not blindly. If you are looking for a hand-holding tutorial this book is not for you (for this I would suggest Up to Speed With Swing). Java Swing is very well organized and full of original explanation. I encourage potential readers to disregard other comments claiming that this book is API repetitive or doesn't explain enough. No book can cover every possible situation that can arise in the creation of a GUI, and no book will fully explain all of the inner workings of each Swing component and UI delegate. Swing is a very complex and extensive library with some very interesting and powerful mechanisms working behind the scenes. Without a doubt, Java Swing is the most informative and rich reference available. I recommend it highly. Matthew Robinson
"Swing", Manning publications
Swing "Tips and Tricks", The Swing Connection
| 
