The Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) is a new class library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in Java. Created as part of the Eclipse project, SWT allows developers to build efficient, portable applications that directly access the user-interface facilities of the operating systems it is implemented on. This revolutionary technology makes it possible to create Java-based applications that are indistinguishable from a platform's native applications. SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will show you how to:

Get SWT, install it, and invoke it from your programs. Understand widgets--the building blocks of GUI--and how they interact with users and compose a GUI. Use graphics routines to configure the appearance of native widgets and draw application-specific graphics. Apply best practices from real-world uses of SWT. Appreciate what makes a quality SWT program. In this book--the first definitive guide to SWT--two of the technology's lead designers and implementers show you how to break the task of building a GUI-based application into components. They then show how these components are modeled in SWT and provide a series of graded examples. The result is a guided tour of the essential aspects of this exciting toolkit, ranging from mouse and keyboard handling to user-interface controls for native operating systems.

If you want to build modern GUI-based application, SWT: The Standard Widget Toolkit, Volume 1, will prove an invaluable guide and reference.