Author Description

In this book, I shall show you how you can reuse the graphics classes provided in JDK for constructing your own Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications. Writing your own graphics classes (and re-inventing the wheels) is mission impossible! These graphics classes, developed by expert programmers, are highly complex and involve many advanced design patterns. However, re-using them are not so difficult, if you follow the API documentation, samples and templates provided. I shall assume you have a good grasp of OOP, including inheritance and polymorphism; otherwise, read the earlier book. I will describe another important concept called nested class (or inner class) in this article. There are two sets of Java APIs for graphics programming: AWT (Abstract Windowing Toolkit) and Swing. AWT API was introduced in JDK 1.0. Most of the AWT components have become obsolete and should be replaced by newer Swing components. Swing API, a much more comprehensive set of graphics libraries that enhances the AWT, was introduced as part of Java Foundation Classes (JFC) after the release of JDK 1.1. JFC consists of Swing, Java2D, Accessibility, Internationalization, and Pluggable Look-and-Feel Support APIs. JFC has been integrated into core Java since JDK 1.2. Other than AWT/Swing Graphics APIs provided in JDK, others have also provided Graphics APIs that work with Java, such as Eclipse's Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) (used in Eclipse), Google Web Toolkit (GWT) (used in Android), 3D Graphics API such as Java bindings for OpenGL (JOGL) and Java3D. What You Will Learn - Introduction - Programming GUI with AWT - AWT Event-Handling - Nested (Inner) Classes - Event Listener's Adapter Classes - Layout Managers and Panel - Swing - More on Swing's JComponents - Pluggable Look and Feel - More on Layout Manager - More on Event-Handling - (Advanced) Observer Design Pattern - (Advanced) Composite Design Pattern - (Advanced) More on Nested Classes Who This Book Is For If you are a JAVA developer