Sams Teach Yourself Java™ 6 in 21 Days

Chapter 10. Building a Swing Interface

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

Windowing 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, a set of classes for the creation and use of graphical user interfaces.

Swing offers the following features:

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

• Containers, interface components that can be used to hold other components, including ...