Preface

This book is a desktop quick reference for Java™ programmers who are writing applications or applets that involve graphics or graphical user interfaces. The first part of the book is a fast-paced, "no fluff" introduction to the Java APIs that comprise the Java Foundation Classes, or JFC. These chapters are followed by a quick-reference section that succinctly details every class of those APIs.

This book complements the best-selling Java in a Nutshell. That volume introduces the Java programming language itself and provides an API quick reference for the core packages and classes of the Java platform. A third volume in the series, Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, covers the Java Enterprise APIs. Programmers working on server-side or enterprise applications will be interested in that book.

0.1. Contents of This Book

The first seven chapters of this book document the graphics and graphical user interface (GUI) APIs used in client-side Java programming. The chapters are:

Chapter 1, "The Java Foundation Classes": Provides a quick introduction to the JFC and the APIs that comprise it.
Chapter 2, "Swing and AWTArchitecture": Explains the architecture used for graphical user interfaces built with the older Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and the new Swing API. The remaining chapters of the book assume an understanding of the fundamentals presented here.
Chapter 3, "Swing Programming Topics": Introduces a number of the most important GUI components and application services provided by the Swing API.
Chapter 4, "Graphics with AWT and Java 2D": Explains how to draw text and graphics. It introduces the AWT graphics API, used in Java 1.0 and Java 1.1, and the powerful new Java 2D API of Java 2.
Chapter 5, "Printing": Covers how to draw text and graphics to a printer, using both the Java 1.1 and Java 2 printing APIs.
Chapter 6, "Data Transfer": Explains how to enable data transfer between and within applications, using both cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop.
Chapter 7, "Applets": Documents the Java applet API, which allows Java applets, or mini-applications, to run within web browsers.

These chapters provide enough information to get you started with each of the JFC APIs. The bulk of the book, however, is the API quick reference, Chapters 8 through 36, which is a succinct but detailed API reference formatted for optimum ease of use. Please be sure to read the Chapter 37, "How To Use This Quick Reference", which appears at the beginning of the reference section. It explains how to get the most out of this book.