Rating: 
Summary: Should be titled: how to write an editor using swing
Review: The book is entitled Core Swing and I bought the book believing it to be so. However, it is not this. Rather it is a collection of chapters on very specific problems which are of limited relevance unless you wish to solve these very specific problems. I managed to extract a few things which I could generalise but really the book needs to be written in a much more general way and then modify the examples to be more general and put them in an appendix. I followed the procedures on customing DND to other components and could not make it work (I believe not bothering to do this will though). JTrees are used as an example for moving data between applications. Who would want to use this in such an obscure way?
Rating: 
Summary: Problems with this book
Review: The book is entitled Core Swing and I bought the book believing it to be so. However, it is not this. Rather it is a collection of chapters on very specific problems which are of limited relevance unless you wish to solve these very specific problems. I managed to extract a few things which I could generalise but really the book needs to be written in a much more general way and then modify the examples to be more general and put them in an appendix. I followed the procedures on customing DND to other components and could not make it work (I believe not bothering to do this will though). JTrees are used as an example for moving data between applications. Who would want to use this in such an obscure way?
Rating:
Summary: Warning...More like a GUI design book than a swing book
Review: The book spends about 80% of it time discussing problems involved in GUI designs which is totally not what the title of the book states. I bought this book because I was looking for a swing reference book that covers the definitions and has small demo code blocks of the swing components. This book cheated me by its "fancy" name. Not recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very limited Scope
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: useful samples, poor writing
Review: This book gives some advanced Swing samples that I can use, but the writing gets in the way. I agree that he rambles too much, glosses over some things and pores way too long on others. This book really needed an editor, and better organization. A minor annoyance is how the sample code excerpts list the variables at the end of the code instead of before the code, so you have search for the end of the sample before you can even start reading it. What we need is a good online site and code snippet archive really.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good, rather specialized, advanced book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Should be titled: how to write an editor using swing
Review: This book's title makes you think it covers SWING. It actually only covers a limited subset of things that can be handled using swing. If you're looking for a general purpose book stay away from this one. This might be useful if you're trying to write a text editor using swing. For the stuff it covers it might be useful but it covers very little - mostly it just collects dust on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for the experienced Swing developer
Review: This is a very well written, specialized book meant for experienced Swing developers. In it Topley covers some of the most complex Swing topics with clarity, detail and useful examples: - Text Components and the HTML package - Bi-Directional Text - Custom Text Component Views - Table Rendering - Table Editing - Drag-and-Drop - Undo/Redo If you are an experienced Swing developer needing to go deeper with any of the above, I would highly recommend this book. It is not for learning Swing (hence the title "Advanced Programming"), and it is a pity that it has been reviewed as such by some others here. - Matt Robinson co-author of "Swing" (Manning Publications, Inc.)
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book for Serious Java GUI programmer
Review: This is one of the most helpful book that I had bought in helping me doing a java GUI in Swing. It is definitely not a book for beginners or for those who are starting to learn about JAVA Swing. It is reference for serious programmer who want to resolve some UI problem or specific UI requirements. It had provide ample examples in which the programmer could capitalize. The only drawback is that it tends to be a bit long winded at time and reader may get lost. That why the book deserved a 4 instead of a 5.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for Swing developers.
Review: This is the second book by Kim Topley that I have purchased, I bought the first book: Java Foundation Classes when it first came out and found it very useful, so was very pleased to see the new book. I have found these books to be a good source of reference and good tutorials. The text is clear and concise and the examples well written and illustrate the subject very well. I initially bought the book because of work I was doing on Drag and Drop and Undo, but found the whole book very useful. Well worth reading by anyone developing in Swing.
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