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 discuss important best practices for user interface design.

Who Can Benefit

This course is for an experienced Java programmer who wants to learn how to use Swing and Model View Controller for your Java Desktop GUI development.

Prerequisites

To benefit from this Swing course, you need to attend one of Sun's Java programming courses or have equivalent experience before attending this Swing course.

Skills Gained

Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• Recognize good user interface design principles
• Use Swing's GUI components and Component Layout Managers
• Write GUI's for form-based applications using standard Swing components
• Understand how develop your GUIs using Model View Controller
• Write Unit Tests for your Swing-based GUIs

Course Content

Module 1 – Introduction (2 hour)

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

Module 2 - Swing Fundamentals (2 hour)

• Event-driven UIs and Swing event handling
• Simple Example: Button in a Frame
• MVC
• Fonts, colors, borders
• A word on threads

Module 3 - Building Java GUIs Using the Swing API (3 hour)

• Describe the JFC Swing technology
• Define Swing
• Identify the Swing packages
• Describe the GUI building blocks: containers, components, and layout managers
• Examine top-level, general-purpose, and special-purpose properties of container
• Examine components
• Examine layout managers
• Describe the Swing single-threaded model
• Build a GUI using Swing components

Module 4 - Handling GUI-Generated Events (2 hour)

• Define events and event handling
• Examine the Java SE event model
• Describe GUI behavior
• Determine the user action that originated an event
• Develop event listeners
• Describe concurrency in Swing-based GUIs and describe the features of the SwingWorker class

Module 5 - Common Containers, Components, and Layouts (4 hour)

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

Module 6 - Menus, Actions, and Toolbars (3 hour)

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

Module 7 - Principles of UI Design (1 hour)

• Designing for ease of use
• Paper prototypes and usability testing
• Performance and perceived performance

Module 8 - More Containers, Components, and Layouts (3 hour)

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

Module 9 - Branding and Customization (2 hour)

• About Box
• Splash screens
• Logos and icons
• Internationalization / Localization

Module 10 - Even More Containers, Components, and Layouts (3 hour)

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

Module 11 - Printing and Data Transfer (3 hour)

• Printing
• Copy and paste
• Drag and drop

Module 12 - Implement the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API (4 hour)

• Describe the JDBC API
• Explain how using the abstraction layer provided by the JDBC API makes a database front end portable across platforms
• Describe the five major tasks involved with the JDBC programmer's interface
• State the requirements of a JDBC driver and its relationship to the JDBC driver manager
• Describe the data access objects (DAO) pattern and its applicability to a given scenario
• Identify the Workflow and Object Interactions
• Implement a Database-Connected Broker Model by Using the DAO Pattern

Module 13 - Log Messages in GUI (3 hour)

• Use the logging API
• Examine a logging example
• Write a custom handler
• Set filters to a particular handler
• Create the Custom Handler class

Module 14 - Implement Multiple-Tier Design (3 hour)

• Compare the BrokerTool two-tier design with the three-tier design for the same application
• Explain how you can use the Java technology package, java.net to implement networking applications
• Demonstrate how to use the Command design pattern in the application
• Apply the Strategy design pattern to create reusable code
• Describe how you can implement the network client
• Describe how you can implement the network server

Module 15 - Implement Advanced Multiple-Tier Design (3 hour)

• Use the new Java concurrency APIs to create a multithreaded server
• Examine a thread pool
• Identify integrity problems in multithreaded servers
• Create a Generic Network Client class

Module 16 - Communicate With Remote Objects Using Java RMI (4 hour)

• Create remote objects
• Use Java RMI to create a multi-tier application
• Deploy a Java RMI Implementation of the BrokerModel Interface
• Create a Java RMI Implementation of the BrokerView Interface