Rating: 
Summary: Don't pay for nothing :-/
Review: * This book is actually 350 pages long, the rest are greetings and badly formatted reprint of JDK documentation* Index takes almost 140 pages and is of no good use at all * No CD-ROM, so you should type in all examples by yourself * Typos in text + typos in listings of examples * It's hard to understand what he is talking about from his examples
Rating:
Summary: Could have been good - but it is cheap
Review: Although "Pure JFC Swing" is 800 pages, more than half the book is a reference to the Swing API. As a reference it is mostly useless. The pages are not labeled and the classes are listed by package so it is almost impossible to find a class without using the index. Each class contains only the signature of each method with no explanation as to how the method might be used which limits its usefulness. The Sun online API is a much better reference. The first half of the book is an introduction to Swing and this is what makes the book worth its very reasonable price. The book starts off with a nice introduction to Swing and the MVC architecture. The author then discusses some of the basic Swing classes. This section of the book features a good discussion of panes but like most of this section it leaves you wanting more. The author has an excellent writing style and gives good, clear examples for each of the classes but each topic ends too soon. Also, too many topics are not included in this book. This book could have been an excellent book. If the publisher had abandoned the idea of supplying a reference and had let Dr. Pantham have the entire 800 pages, this would have been a much better book. If you plan on doing a little work with Swing and you're looking for a light introduction, this book may serve that purpose.
Rating: 
Summary: Dont buy this !
Review: Dont waste your money and time. Dont buy this book. Just compilation of api. Its good we have 30 day return policies !
Rating:
Summary: This book should be 2 times thinner
Review: First part of this book is good for beginners, but for peoplewho is been programming Java for a while its a waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Give me my money back
Review: Fortunately this book was relatively cheap. Otherwise I'd be pretty upset. All kinds of typos, so right off the bat I got a bad feeling about it. But most of what I read was useless information. Didn't help at all. I'd give it 0 stars if possible.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book for reference
Review: Got this book and so far I like it! It is good as a reference on Java swing components. Also it was very cheap as compared to some of the other expensive swing books.Author has added lot of examples. Use this book if you already know somthing abt Java Swing and want to sharpen up some specific GUI areas. Almost 50% of the book is dedicated to the API reference on various AWT and SWING components. In my opinion, all this information is available on SUN's website. In short, this is a very good book for Swing reference which also costs less!!
Rating:
Summary: Useless Index book
Review: I agree with the other two reviewers (1) it doesn't live up to the hype, (2) don't buy. It's nothing but index, userless.
Rating:
Summary: Not upto the reviews read so far for this book..
Review: I bought the book following the reviews and I found it to be a waste. I was looking for an advanced swing book and I landed in buying one that is very elementary. I expected this book to provide some advanced examples but I did not find one. This book is for beginner, and even a beginner will not need this book after a week or 2. The book is actually 356 pages and rest is just appendix which one can freely download from some site on the net. As an example hardly 2 pages are devoted to the JScrollPane, which actually needs a deep understanding. Buy this book and u will never touch it again. I do not know how some people gave a 5 * ranking to this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice examples, Nice index
Review: I have 10 years C++ and OOD, but am new to Java. In the last 3 weeks, I have gotten the language down pretty well, but am still climbing the learning curve on Swing. I found the index confusing at first, but now I realize that it is quite powerful. It took me about 5 minutes of dedicated effort to figure the index and appendices out, but now I find it very useful (the confusion derives from the index's redundancy, but once you figure this out the redundancy can be used to advantage). Appendix A (JFC Swing Quick Reference) is really poorly laid out. It is 261 pages with nothing but "Appendix A" listed at the top of each page. I believe it is laid out by package. As such, the least they could do is put the package name at the top of each page or dictionary-style black markings along the edges of pages as in several O'Reilly texts. I recommend not starting with Appendix A; look to the index and let it tell you what page to jump to in Appendix A. I have 8 Java books that I purchased in the last 3 weeks; this one does something very helpful. The text descriptions of code samples are described with reference to specific code blocks, i.e., "snippet 1 does...", "snippet 2 does...". This is VERY helpful because if you scan a code sample, you are likely familiar with 90% of the code sample. With this text's format you can rapidly skip past the text descriptions for the code you already understand. I have found this EXTREMELY helpful (I waste a lot of time in a lot of books reading the same information over and over again). This is the first book outside of the O'Reilly series that I have found useful in my effort to learn Java. In sum, the value of this book (for me) derives from its presentation of the big picture on Swing. I don't need a book that goes into endless detail about specific methods and classes (I can get this from numerous reference sources...and I can learn this over time while developing). The value of this book comes from its ability to give you the big picture and train you on Swing-based design patterns and methodologies. I already know A LOT about GUI development, OOD, using foundation classes, etc...what I needed to learn was the "Swing way" of doing things. So, if you share my background, this book will be very useful.
Rating:
Summary: Nice examples, Nice index
Review: I have 10 years C++ and OOD, but am new to Java. In the last 3 weeks, I have gotten the language down pretty well, but am still climbing the learning curve on Swing. I found the index confusing at first, but now I realize that it is quite powerful. It took me about 5 minutes of dedicated effort to figure the index and appendices out, but now I find it very useful (the confusion derives from the index's redundancy, but once you figure this out the redundancy can be used to advantage). Appendix A (JFC Swing Quick Reference) is really poorly laid out. It is 261 pages with nothing but "Appendix A" listed at the top of each page. I believe it is laid out by package. As such, the least they could do is put the package name at the top of each page or dictionary-style black markings along the edges of pages as in several O'Reilly texts. I recommend not starting with Appendix A; look to the index and let it tell you what page to jump to in Appendix A. I have 8 Java books that I purchased in the last 3 weeks; this one does something very helpful. The text descriptions of code samples are described with reference to specific code blocks, i.e., "snippet 1 does...", "snippet 2 does...". This is VERY helpful because if you scan a code sample, you are likely familiar with 90% of the code sample. With this text's format you can rapidly skip past the text descriptions for the code you already understand. I have found this EXTREMELY helpful (I waste a lot of time in a lot of books reading the same information over and over again). This is the first book outside of the O'Reilly series that I have found useful in my effort to learn Java. In sum, the value of this book (for me) derives from its presentation of the big picture on Swing. I don't need a book that goes into endless detail about specific methods and classes (I can get this from numerous reference sources...and I can learn this over time while developing). The value of this book comes from its ability to give you the big picture and train you on Swing-based design patterns and methodologies. I already know A LOT about GUI development, OOD, using foundation classes, etc...what I needed to learn was the "Swing way" of doing things. So, if you share my background, this book will be very useful.
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