Rating: 
Summary: Excellent first book on JFC/Swing material
Review: As Java books go, this one is very good. Walks you through the Swing components in an orderly manner, providing a few examples for each class. Some topics are superceded by JDK changes, but there appears to be good on-line support for the book. The small typos (from rushing the book out) are acceptable considering the overall content.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely gets you started...
Review: 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!
Rating: 
Summary: If you get it free, browse it. Don't buy it!
Review: I am surprised at the audacity of the author to put sample programs and screen shots from Swing Tutorial published by Sun(Javasoft) in his book. Other than the chapter on rolling out his own PLAF, there is nothing worth reading in this book. One can learn more from the online tutorial at the Javasoft website than from this book. In a nutshell, you would be wasting your hard earned money if you buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very shallow coverage
Review: I bought this book sometime back because this was the first Swing book on the market. However, in my opinion, using the online documentation from Sun is a lot better because the online documentation is a lot more comprehensive. This book just skims over the APIs in Swing.
Rating: 
Summary: Great expectations, great disappointment...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Out of date but I think its the best swing introductory book
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed that book omits important areas
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed that book omits important areas
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent jump start book for Swing.
Review: I really like to give credits to this book. It is a very good book for people who know Java already but have not yet stepped into Swing. It saved me a lot of time in understanding what Swing is and how Swing works. Nobody could become a Swing master by reading a single Swing book. In my opion, this is terrific Swing book to start with.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers what it promises!
Review: 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.
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