From the book lists at Adware Report:

All information current as of 01:09:18 Pacific Time, Tuesday, 22 February 2005. Up to Speed with Swing    by Steven J. Gutz / Steven Gutz / Matthew Robinson / Pavel Vorobiev   Paperback:     Manning Publications     September, 1999    US$32.95       Usually ships in 24 hours Click the button below to . . .      (which will add the book to your Amazon U.S.A. "Shopping Cart") . . . or use your browser's Back button to return to the search-list page.

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Editorial description(s):

Amazon.com
Stephen Gutz's competent book about one of Java's graphical user interface (GUI)-building technologies covers everything you'd want in a Swing book--layouts, events, all the components, and more. Gutz focuses on the interface components, detailing buttons, text elements, and tables. Throughout, his code is clear and easy to follow, and a chapter about look-and-feel programming is excellent.

The Web resources that support this book are what distinguish it from the crowd of Swing books. Gutz monitors and participates in a question-and-answer forum on the Manning site. Java programmers post questions in this forum, and other programmers--including Gutz, who seems quite active--reply with solutions and advice. The site appears to be quite heavily used, yet with a good signal-to-noise ratio. The Q&A forum is only one piece of the site--it also features the illustrative code from the book, an errata page, and an Adobe Acrobat copy of the text. The publisher restricts access to the Web site by prompting you for a particular word from the book before assigning you a username and password.

Thanks to the Web site and Gutz's participation there, it's almost as though you get free consulting time when you buy this book. --David Wall --This text refers to the edition.


From Book News, Inc.
Swing is Sun Microsystem's attempt to improve and replace Java's Abstract Windowing Toolkit and is a significant part of a larger group of technologies named Java Foundation Classes. This tutorial (which assumes some experience building applications with Java 1.1) discusses such topics as frames and panels; tabled, scroll, and split panes; labels and buttons; text management; progress and scroll bars; menus, toolbars, and actions; dialogs and internal frames; list boxes; and trees.Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR


CompBookReview.com, October 99
". . . authored by a master programmer, Up to Speed with Swing will save you time mastering Swing. This tutorial style title covers the basics of Swing and gives you an understanding of the big picture as well as the experience of working through detailed examples.

In addition, the author monitors and participates in a Swing message board Manning Publications site. The site also includes code from the book and an errata page. Wonderful!"


Association of C & C++ Users Book Reviews
"This book presents a thorough introduction and reference to Swing (why to use it, how to use it, how to optimize it, etc.). The explanations are clear and concise and there are plenty of sample programs (available from a web site). Recommended for the professional developer and as a student text in an HCI module."


Book Info
Provides instruction on mastering Swing, from a Java programming expert. Softcover.


Book Description
This tutorial-style book is current with the new Java JDK 1.2, including examples that accommodate recent changes to the Swing challenge, starting with the basics and extending into intermediate and advanced areas, this revised manual is enhanced with more detailed examples and illustration. This new edition integrates topics that were either unavailable or unstable in the first edition including action handling, file dialogs, and printing. This replaces 1884777643.




Reader review(s):

Disappointed that book omits important areas, September 2, 2000
I read all the reviews and thought this book would provide a good reference on Swing. While it does introduce developers to Swing, I've subsequently found that it glosses over or fails to cover topics that are important once you start developing with Swing.

For example, the book barely touches on layout managers. But an understanding of layout managers is essential to development of a good UI via Swing. The book also has no/minimal coverage of areas such as text selection and carets. I suspect that there are other areas not mentioned but I haven't proceeded far enough with Swing to recognize what else is missing.

With hindsight, I wish that I'd bought the Java Swing book published by O'Reilly.

Great expectations, great disappointment..., March 18, 2000
I have done quiet a bit of research on the net before I ordered this book, just so I get the best one. It looked just the book for me to start learning Swing. (I know Java already). When I looked through the book I was shocked to see that it was little more than a doorstop. Gutz is one of those few gifted individuals who really knows what he's talking about. BUT doesn't know how to explain it clearly. Apart from his coding style and the last two chapters this book rushes through every aspect of swing with very little to say about all parts of Swing. If you are looking for a book that will REALLY help you learn Swing, I recommend you take your hard earned cash elsewhere. I am returning it. And make a decision probably between the Sun's tutorial and Matthew Robinson's Swing book.

Really well written, August 5, 1999
this is one fo the really good books on Swing. Nevermind ath it's slightly out of date..the writing here is very very high quality nad you'll come away with a great foundation. His "useful groupsings" of methods together into meaningful categories is so much better than the API dumps a lot of other books are...

Delivers what it promises!, August 22, 1998
I'm an experienced Window GUI programmer who switched to Java couple of weeks ago. Within a week, this book really guide me "up to speed" to swing as it promises. In real world, you want to absorb core concept & examples as soon as possible and pick up real stuff while coding based on them. I couldn't find any significant "neat" tricks from "Core JFC"(which is thick enough to please some people) and this is not a ref anyway. Org & examples are neat and Guts knows how to get to the point without wasting your time. One of the best considering the current status of swing itself.

Good as far as it goes, January 17, 2003
My copy has a little different cover, says "2nd edition", and is copyright 2000, but I couldn't find an exact match on Amazon.

The book is a good introduction to Swing, getting this Java programmer started fairly quickly. One thing that's appreciated for this server side Java programmer with no previous familiarity with AWT is the brief section reviewing AWT - which you unfortunately also have to know to use Swing, it seems.

That said, you run into the limits of the book rather quickly. There's a lot of detail on how to use each component, but very little on how to use it well. Coverage of layouts and events, both critical to building a good UI, is sketchy.

Also, there's no real reference section. Even just a brief listing of all the relevant classes and their methods would be really nice - say, similar to the reference section of David Flanagan's classic "Java in a Nutshell".

Finally, the author seems to be somewhat Windows centric, which is a little unfortunate since the main reason to use Swing is to produce a cross platform product.

Fast track to SWING, September 18, 2000
Upto speed with Swing by Steven Gutz is really a fast track to most advanced GUI , the SWING. The author covered all features of the SWING. The book is very interesting to read and complete with working examples. All the chapters are organized and well written. It defenitely a needed book to learn things fast and work with, rather than voluminous and time consuiming books. I recommend this book for beginner/ intermediate level of java programmers. Thanks for Steven Gutz for his efforts to put the java programmers on fast track!!!

author online is cool, January 11, 1999
the author answers your programming questions in online forum and everybody helps out - plus the book is pretty good if you only know older java gui stuff

Out of date but I think its the best swing introductory book, January 11, 1999
I have other swing books but this was the first one out and it is the best book at keeping you in tune with gui development. The other books I have are great once you spend tons of time with them but are so detail oriented that its frustrating. This book was good when I needed to learn and its also good to look at because it has user interface design tips. I think interface design is also an art and shouldnt be treated as such a science. This book gives good suggestions at how to make the interface nicer for average users. The only complaint I have is that it is out of date for JDK1.2 but since another edition is coming out I will buy that one.

Great way to get started using Swing..., January 11, 1999
This book is great for people like me who are just getting started with Swing. I recommend it highly if you know awt but now want to stay with the times and use Swing.

Definitely gets you started..., January 7, 1999
For an experienced Java developer programming with the AWT components, this book is a quick reference to get you started using the Swing components. It 's light reading but gives you enough detail to understand the basic concepts and components in Swing.

Once you've read through the entire book you'll have no problem transitioning to the Swing components. The code samples are simple and straight-forward, although not very useful when looking for more complicated, practical, real-life examples, but it's a start in the right direction. The book was one of the first Swing references released.

Definitely worth the money!

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