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Rating: 
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I reviewed this book when it was being written and I wanted to share my thoughts.- The book's approach is VERY useful and appropriate for the intended audience - Programmers, developers, designers, user interface professionals, graphic designers, technical writers, and managers. - It is a needed book in the Java world. There are no competitors in the Java platform. Similar books are the Microsoft "Windows Interface Guidelines - A guide for Designing Software" for the DOS, OS/2 and Windows platform, and the Apple "Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines" for the Mac platform. - This book fills a void in the Java world. The Windows and Macintosh platforms both have industry guidelines documents that serve as the seminal reference books for developers on each platform. - This book is necessary reading for all Java developers, designers, and interface designers. - I would recommend this book to my many colleagues who are developing Java applets and applications. It is a critical addition to our programming library and list of programming and design books.
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Summary: Just what I needed!
Review: One excellent feature of the book is that it and its code samples are available free online from Sun at java.sun.com/products/jlf/ This book is very specifically aimed at designers who want to lay out components that mesh visually with Java's Metal, a Swing-based (javax.swing) cross-platform look and feel. As another reviewer pointed out, it's not primarily about designing an interface for usability, but for look and feel. It doesn't completely ignore usability issues, but only covers the basics that are built into the platform. For instance, the book details how many pixels of space to use between buttons and how the text and image on the button should be placed and what it should look like in active/inactive/selected states. Another example is a detailed description of designing icon bitmaps for different color depths, platforms and internationalization. This book's invaluable for the detailed description of the behavior of the Swing. A simple example is the description of selecting items in a JComboBox by (a) clicking the primary mouse button to activate the list and clicking on a selection, or by (b) depressing the primary mouse button, scrolling to the selection, and releasing. This is not a book about Java programming per se, but contains many links to illustrative code examples for the look and feel. But you won't get a detailed description of event dispatching. (To the book's credit, it does examine which events are available per component.) Despite its wordiness, I like Kim Topley's book on JFC for the description of the event model and the components, but I haven't compared Topley's book to anything more recent.
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Summary: Specifically for Java GUI applications and applets:
Review: This book will be helpful for the designers who create Java Graphical User Interface applications and applets. The book gives details for Java GUI components and their layout, including dimensional details of components such as buttons, toolbars, scroll panes, etc. Technical knowledge seekers had better see Swing books. This one is more like artistic/designer's helper type, although it is very good in that sense. Unless you are in Java GUI application/applet creation business this book becomes rather costly choice for general-purpose coverage. Suggested for evaluation for the people in that specific field.
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry I did not like this book
Review: This is a decent book, but is very specific. I probably should have expected a pixel-by-pixel account, but I didn't. I was looking for more background as to why the Look and Feel was designed the way it is. This is the text you want if you are hoping to design applications that conform exactly to Sun's Java Look & Feel. It is not a book that will give you the slightest background on designing a more useful interface.
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Summary: A Java Essential
Review: This is the only serious book on the market which deals with user interface guidelines based on the JFC. The only drawback is that there should be an HCI methodology companion book to be used alongside. ARE YOU LISTENING, SUN? Therefore only 4-stars.
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Summary: Excellent resource for web developers
Review: Whereas Windows developers usually have a copy of Microsoft's 'Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design' to turn to for advice on behaviour and usage of Windows elements, such a resource has been sorely lacking for developers of applications for the internet. This book fills the gap admirably. It provides a comprehensive set of guidelines on the use of the various components of an internet application (windows, dialogs, menus, buttons and so on), with detailed descriptions of their appearance and behaviour. As with any set of guidelines, there are individual elements and recommendations with which one could disagree. This is an eminently practical and useful book, and I believe it should be on the bookshelf of every developer of internet applications - whether using Java or another tool.
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