Swing Short Course, Part I

Course Notes Table of Contents
Exercises | Online Training Index

Swing Short Course, Part I
MageLang Institute

The goal of this two-part course is to help you understand Swing and its advantages over the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT). You will learn about similar capabilities that include Swing controls, layout managers, and events, as well as new capabilities not readily available in AWT.

Part I of the Swing Short Course provides a general introduction to Swing. After completion, you will be able to use the Swing component set anywhere you previously used AWT components.

Part II of this course will be available shortly. It includes information on using Swing's Pluggable Look & Feel and Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. In discussing MVC, you will learn how to use the more advanced Swing controls, along with the advantages of designing your interfaces with the MVC model.

As Swing is so new, all the examples have complete source code shown, versus just short code snippets.

Note: If you have questions or need help with this course, be sure to take advantage of the JDC Training Office Hours designed to support this course. These discussion forum-style sessions are scheduled throughout the month of November and are hosted by the writers of this course.

Short Course Prerequisites

A general familiarity with the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and the Java 1.1 event model is assumed. If you are not familiar with these capabilites, see The Java Tutorial, section "New AWT Event Model."

These course notes and exercises require a JDK^TM 1.1.2 or higher environment.

How to Take this Short Course

Because people tend to learn in different ways and have different backgrounds, this course is designed with many paths through the material. You can begin with the Exercises and refer back to the notes, or you can begin with the Course Notes and follow the embedded links to appropriate exercises. It is possible to cover the course content in a depth-first, or breadth-first manner. For example, you may want to learn everything about a particular subject before moving on, or you may want to get a broad overview before exploring each subject in depth.

Entry Points:

Course Notes

Exercises