SWT : A Developer's Notebook (Developer's Notebook)

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book only if you are a beginner to Java and GUI
Review: I like SWT. It's easier to use than Swing and looks better than AWT. However there are a few things that are done differently and this book tells you most of it. However, the books stops right here and there is not much meat after you done with the basics.

The first problem I find with this book it that it's trying to be too broad. Explanations on when to use named inner classes to avoid code duplication have nothing to do in a notebook manual. It's a waste of space, people picking up this volume should already be acquainted to Java language.

I didn't find the more interesting stuff I was looking for (i.e. customizable and resizable toolbars) It's already in eclipse IDE, so I guess I will have to do some digging in the code instead of relying on this book.

No treatment of internationalization, serialization of widgets for archiving, and missing some important GUI design issues.

Absolutly no references on flags you can pass. It's important because you need to use flags wiht constructors a lot in SWT.

If you try the examples, you will find some bugs. In the layout chapter, the examples don't mention the shell.pack() method which causes all the examples to fail. Some other bugs at various places. They are easy to spot, so editing was probably sloppy.

Explanation on the menus is vague. It would have been nice to add some diagrams explaning the cascade vs. pulldown mechanisms for adding items.

In conclusion, buy this book if you are a beginner at Java and GUI programming. If not, then online tutorials will bring you what you need to write your apps.

Rating:
Summary: Short introduction for professionals
Review: I've read several books on the SWT. This is the shortest and most succinct of them all. The book is organized into chapters around the different types of SWT controls and containers. Then within each chapter the author presents a basic function (e.g. creating a toolbar), then covers how it's done using a combination of explanatory text and a small code fragment.

I'm appreciative of the brevity of the book. It doesn't pander to the reader by going into great detail. It acknowledges what most of us already know which is that a book like this is a starting point to get you working with the basics of SWT, and after that you will use the JavaDoc when you are working on it.

If you are looking for a 'getting started' work on SWT and you are already a competent Java programmer who is familiar with client side development, this is probably the SWT book you are looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Getting started with SWT...
Review: If you are new to Java GUI development, this would be a great starter for someone interested in developing an application using SWT. It covers most of the basic SWT components and how to put them together and create and application. I thought the code examples were sufficient and well documented.

However, I don't think I was the target audience for this book. Already being familiar with Swing, I was hoping for more details on SWT and what the differences were between SWT, AWT and Swing. This notebook essentially assumes you aren't that familiar with GUI development in general. It would have helped me had there been phrases such as "If you're familiar with the Swing you can skip X and note the way SWT does Y". I think about 60% or so of the notebook describes information someone familiar with AWT or Swing would already feel comfortable doing.

A good book for beginners, but I was hoping for something more.

Rating:
Summary: A good way to get started quickly with SWT coding...
Review: Most of my Java coding has been server-side with no user interface. But I'd like to try some interactive Java programming. O'Reilly's SWT - A Developer's Notebook by Tim Hatton looks like it should be perfect for where I'm at...

Chapter List: Getting Started; SWT Shells; SWT Menus; SWT Toolbars; SWT Text Fields; SWT Buttons; SWT Lists; The SWT Combo; SWT Layouts; SWT Composites and Groups; SWT Tabbed Folders; SWT Tables; SWT Trees; Other SWT Listeners; SWT CoolBars; SWT Slider and ProgressBar; SWT Standard Dialogs; A Complete SWT Application; Index

I like the Developer's Notebook series from O'Reilly as it is a down-to-earth, practical approach to learning some new aspect of technology. In this installment, Hatton quickly gets you up and running with the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) within Eclipse so that you can start building interactive applications in Java with user interfaces. There's a lot of code to show you real examples, along with the screen shots to show you what it should look like when you're done. The "How Do I Do That?" and "What Just Happened?" sections after each example take just enough time to give you the explanations of the technique you just learned, without giving you time to lose your momentum. The final chapter lets you tie together all the techniques you've learned into a fully functional application. When you're done, not only should you have a good grasp of SWT coding, but you'll have a good book to keep around to help you remember things as you continue forward.

Nicely done, and another solid addition to the Developer's Notebook series in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Good as a introduction to SWT
Review: This book covers a lot of the simple aspects of SWT development. It gives code examples on how to build a lot of the simple widgets, how to bring up a window, how to bring up a color picker, etc.

Positive: The book is short and simple. Good for novices to SWT. The jaw-jabber is reduced to a minimum and most of the book is code based examples that you can try to get a feel for what is and is not possible in SWT.

Negative: The book doesn't cover all of SWT. In particular it hardly treats anything outside of the org.eclipse.swt.widget package. ImageData, Graphics, DragNDrop, subclassing cavas and other elements of SWT are not covered.

Overall a good simple book that gets your feet wet without wasting alot of your time. However, if you need a complex app you'll need to get a more advance book after this one.