Tutorial: GUI with Swing

[Nicole Schmidt]

Hi Java Guys,
I try to write a cool desktop app. But I find it really difficult to make a good GUI with swing. Does anybody know a good online Tutorial, or book (need not to be online)?
Regards.
Nicole

[Muhammad Saifuddin]

The one I know is.

http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/looks/index.html

[Ulf Dittmer]

The Swing Tutorial is a good start. The complete tutorial can also be downloaded. All the example codes for individual Swing features are here. A few more tutorials can be found here.

If you're just starting out with Swing I'd stay away from additional libraries like JGoodies.
[ August 03, 2008: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]

[Nicole Schmidt]

I find it specially difficult to place my controls in a "nice" way on the panel. It always looks nasty.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Well, "nasty" is of course relative to your design sensibilities :-)

Generally, using an appropriate LayoutManager puts components into proper places. I find myself using BoxLayout and GridLayout a lot, possibly using a hierarchy of JPanels.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Go to Cai Horstmann's website and search for the GBC class designed for assistance getting GridBagLayout to work.
The classic tutorial about GridBag is here .

[Jelle Klap]

If you're already familiar with the basics of Swing, I can recommend the book Filthy Rich Clients.
To quote directly from its preface: "This book is about building better, more effective and cooler desktop applications using graphical and animated effects". I found it to be an immensely fun and educational read!