In this practical 3-day Swing course, you will learn to develop desktop applications using Swing under Java 1.6. You will learn how to design and write form based GUI applications using standard Swing components and, off course, how to use the Model-View-Controller approach to build your Swing based applications. You will also learn how to use interface components and component layout managers provided by Swing and we will discuss important best practices for User Interface design.

Day 1
Introduction

• Why Swing?
• AWT, SWT & Swing Comparison
• Why Model–View–Controller?
• Pluggable Look-and-Feels
• Applets
• Java Webstart
• Hello World in Swing
• Sample UIs

Swing Fundamentals

• Event-driven UIs and Swing event handling
• Simple Example: Button in a Frame
• MVC
• Fonts, Colours, Borders
• A Word on Threads

Common Containers, Components and Layouts

• Containers
JFrame, JDialog, JPanel, JScrollPane
• Components
• JComponent
• JLabel, JButton
• JToggleButton, JRadioButton
• Sliders and Spinners
• JTextField and JTextArea
• Layouts
• FlowLayout, BorderLayout, GridLayout, BoxLayout

Menus, Actions and Toolbars

• JMenu, JMenuItem
• JToolBar, Action
• Putting it together: Developing a simple application

Day 2
Principles of UI Design

• Designing for Ease of Use
• Paper Prototypes & Usability Testing
• Performance & Perceived Performance

More Containers, Components and Layouts

• Containers
• JPopup
• JSplitPane and JTabbedPane
• Components
• Tooltips
• ComboBoxes
• Listboxes
• JProgressBar
• JTable
• Layouts
• GridBagLayout

Automatic Testing with JFC Unit

Day 3
Branding and Customisation

• About Box
• Splash Screens
• Logos and Icons
• Internationalisation / Localisation

Even More Containers, Components, and Layouts:

• Containers
• JDesktopPane, JInternalFrame
• JRootPane, JWindow
• Components
• File Chooser
• Color Chooser
• Date Chooser
• JOptionPane
• JTree
• Layouts
• SpringLayout, OverlayLayout

Printing & Data Transfer

• Printing
• Copy & Paste
• Drag & Drop