Rating: 
Summary: Quite an _overview_
Review: I've been working with Java for about a month, and bought this book to help with some more difficult and specific problems. This book didn't help me at all. This book doesn't get to the nitty-gritty that I needed. The examples are poor. Everything is presented very quickly, which might be for someone who is interested in Swing, but isn't expected to develop with it!
Rating: 
Summary: Up to Speed with Swing by Steven Gutz
Review: If you want to start replacing your AWT code right now, this is the book for you. Guided by a master programmer who writes Java for a living, you'll learn Swing from the insider's point of view. Up to Speed with Swing has one purpose: to save you time mastering Swing. From the basics of Swing to creating a custom look and feel, from the Model View Controller architecture to optimizing your Swing code, this tutorial gives you an understanding of the big picture as well as the experience of working through detailed examples. For more detailed information about this book, go to www.manning.com/Gutz2
Rating: 
Summary: Good as far as it goes
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: content pretty thin
Review: Overall, not the detailed content that I really needed to develop a major app. Chapters on the Tree and Table classes are the longest, but I haven't had to use them yet. Plenty of more useful info available from the JDC and the Swing page.
Rating: 
Summary: author online is cool
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Fair, but rushed, effort
Review: The author should be commended for penetrating the dense, and at times insufficient, Swing documentation to generate some useful examples. Even so, far too many important issues are glossed over and there are many, many typos. Overall, a very rushed job. The author is definately a hold over from the AWT coding days; his applications tend to subclass JFrame (a now unecessary habit) and he avoids all use of inner classes without any explanation of their pros or cons. The chapters build, in a rather unpredictable manner, towards the more complex examples, which mix JTree and JTable together. On the flip side, the book is very effective at uses screen grabs and illustrations to demonstrate ideas (a weakness in other books, notably Eckel's "Thinking in Java"). In the final consideration, I seem to be liking this book less as I refer to it more and more. I'll choose my next book on JFC/Swing more carefully.
Rating: 
Summary: Great up-and-running book
Review: The book takes you from a basic understanding of Java's AWT to a basic understanding of Java's new Swing. The only real things missing are that the author glosses over too many of the Swing methods too quickly, and that he misses much of the Swing hierarchy. It quickly gets through a few basics and into a few very useful classes, but I guess I'm also looking for a good, thick reference guide(s) as well.
Rating:
Summary: Good UI Guidlines. Bad Swing Book.
Review: The hints on user interface design were helpful and concise. A better (but not great) UI design book is Interface Design by Peter Bickford (ISBN 0-12-095860-0). The code examples and API explaination were shallow at best.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me through some trouble spots
Review: The swing tutorial has a bunch of place holders in the JTree section. This book helped me figure out what I was missing when I needed it. I also liked the overview of the Swing classes
Rating:
Summary: Great way to get started using Swing...
Review: 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.
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