Java Swing, 2nd Edition

Chapter 28. Swing Under the Hood

While writing the first edition of this book, we sent mail to several Java newsgroups asking what topics developers would like to see explained in more detail. We received a tidal wave of responses, encompassing some rather arcane parts of Swing. Of those that were not covered elsewhere in the book, most of the replies concerned the same five areas:

• Understanding focus in Swing and altering the flow of focus over components

• Multithreading issues in Swing

• Mixing lightweight and heavyweight (Swing and AWT) components in Swing

• The Swing RepaintManager

• Creating your own Swing component

In response to your requests, we offer this collection of tips, tricks, and things that made us cry “Eureka!” at about two in the morning. Since many of these topics had little or no documentation when Swing was created, the authors had to dig through the Swing source code much more than normal to answer these questions. Hence, we called this chapter “Swing Under the Hood.” As Swing has evolved, we’ve updated it to reflect today’s realities and to incorporate new content.