Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days, Sixth Edition

Day 10. Building a Swing Interface

Although computers can be operated in a command-line environment such as a Linux shell or the Windows command prompt, most computer users expect software to feature a graphical user interface (GUI) and to receive input with a mouse and keyboard.

GUI software can be one of the more challenging tasks for a novice programmer, but as you learned yesterday, Java has simplified the process with Swing.

Swing offers the following features:

• Common user interface components, including buttons, text fields, text areas, labels, check boxes, radio buttons, scrollbars, lists, menu items, and sliders.

• Containers—interface components that can be used to hold other components (including other containers). Containers include ...