Rating:
(24 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Joshua Marinacci Page
ISBN : 0596009070
New from $20.51
Format: PDF
Download Free Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs Paperback from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Review
"It might sound like a 1950s pulp murder mystery novel, but Swing Hacks is actually a guide for Java developers that's packed with ways to get the most from the Swing application program interface. It's no Swing bible, there's already quite a few of those, but it's a great reference guide for all the cool stuff. The book is especially suited to client-focused Java developers who want to deliver polished applications, those who want to push Java to its limits, and coders who want to learn powerful techniques for their own applications. It has the typical depth you'd expect from an O'Reilly title and the practical approach ensures it doesn't get sidetracked. The chapters on Transparent & Animated Windows and Rendering are particularly helpful." .net magazine, September 2005
About the Author
Joshua Marinacci is the author of "The Java Sketchbook" column for java.net, covering topics in Java client-side and web development. A Java programmer since 1995, he's currently working on enterprise document management software. Joshua earned his BS from Georgia Tech in 1997, and has been a professional programmer for over a decade.
Chris Adamson is the Associate Online Editor for the O'Reilly web sites ONJava.com and java.net, and is the author of O'Reilly's QuickTime for Java: A Developer's Notebook. His consulting company, Subsequently & Furthermore, Inc., specializes in Java media development. Chris has a BA and BS from Stanford University and an MA from Michigan State University.
Books with free ebook downloads available Free Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs Paperback
- Series: Hacks
- Paperback: 546 pages
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media (June 1, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0596009070
- ISBN-13: 978-0596009076
- Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs
I'm surprised that it's taken this many years for a book like this to make it to market. There are good Swing books available, but they rarely go beyond the basics. As soon as I heard about this one, I pre-ordered and began waiting.
It essentially consists of 99 power 'tricks' for creating WOW effects in your user interfaces. Some are eye candy that you'd probably never put in a production application, but I'd say 80%+ could be applied to every day app's. I'll be spending many hours pouring over the details of each hack to gain the deep insight offered by this book.
This book is going to allow me to reach the next level of Swing polish. I find it hard to believe that most people that consider themselves Swing developers wouldn't gain a lot from reading this book. Run, don't walk, and get this book.
There are a few minor disappointments, but I emphasis minor. The production quality seems a bit rushed as there was quite a few obvious errors in the preface alone, although not of a technical nature. Perhaps only the preface escaped any editing oversight, since the remainder of the book had nothing that jumped out at me.
As usual today, the examples are all available for download from OReilly's website. But I wonder why they didn't take the extra step of providing runnable versions of each hack. You have to compile each one - a minor annoyance. When browsing the book it would have been cool to be able to just double-click an associated jar file to see the effect in action.
The author clearly uses a Macintosh, since all (perhaps I missed one or two) the screen shots are from a Mac, and some of the Hacks relate to duplicating Mac OS features.
This book is a pretty good one in the O'Reilly hack series, showing 100 specific tricks that you can do with Swing that you don't normally find in books or websites on the subject.
Chapter 6, "Transparent and Animated Windows," is one of my favorites because it helps my Swing components look a little more Mac-like. Creating transparent windows, creating frame-anchored sheets for dialogs, animating the sheet dialog, and sliding notes out from the taskbar are some of the hacks in that chapter. All it takes is a little knowledge of the Swing heavyweight component glass pane, and you're up and running. Buried in Hack 54 is an invaluable gem: Want to antialias all the text on your Swing application without touching any code? No problem, just add the following definition to the command line when you invoke your application:
java -Dswing.aatext=true MyStartClass
Chapter 10, "Audio," is also a good chapter to look at, because many Swing programmers tend to overlook sound as an important part of their application, plus since I am a multimedia programmer it is the kind of topic I would enjoy anyways. Maybe you want the swishing sound of a folder closing or of a clanging trash can when you throw away something in your Swing application. Hacks 70 through 73 discuss playing sounds with applets, JavaSound, the Java Media Framework, and Quicktime for Java technologies. Hack 74 shows you how to add MP3 support to the Java Media Framework API as well. This is not really a Swing hack, but it is simple to do and interesting.
Chapter 12, "Miscellany," presents us with some obvious tricks and some very important tips.
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