Joshua Marinacci's Blog

Java One Lessons : The book

Java One Lessons

The highlights for me were our session for Swing Hacks and meeting with customers at the JDIC and JDNC booths (more on that in my next blog). It's great to interact with developers (my "customers" essentially) and get some real feedback.

The session for Swing Hacks went quite well. I was incredibly nervous (I've never spoken in front of more than 50 people before), but calmed down once I got going. I sure drank a lot of water though! The talk was well attended (about 75% full) and we had quite a few people hang around afterwards to ask questions and sign copies of the book. Very exciting.

The book finally went up on Amazon during the conference so we can finally see what the sales ranking is (4kish, last I checked). It was originally supposed to be shipping from Amazon on the 22nd but there was a last minute glitch with the printing and we had to scrap a lot of books. Some pages near the front (all of the preface, I think) were missing the purple headers and chapter numbers. Since this was the printer's fault (not O'Reilly's) they had to scrap them all and rush to print up new ones. For the first few days the bookstore at JavaOne was the only place you could buy the book, which is why it didn't show up on Amazon until later in the week. We kept a few of the misprints to give away to the audience and other attendees, but all of the ones for sale (both at JavaOne and at other traditional sellers) are the correct copies.

We started getting our first few reviews in. The one on Amazon was very positive. The one from elliotth was pretty negative. Well I knew not everyone would be happy with the book. It's a bit of a departure from the other hacks books but I think it turned out pretty well. I think the biggest issue with the book is that it's not for everyone. If you are a super advanced Swing developer then some of the techniques will be things you already know. (Also, being in the hacks format we don't always have room to fully explore an idea, just show it's possible and suggest where it could go in the future.) Now if, on the other hand, you are a newer Swing developer who knows the basics but wants to push the envelope then this book is for you. Either way, read the reviews and tell me what you think.

One thing that worries me is that both reviews mention visual problems with the beginning of the book which makes me wonder if they got one of the misprints. If you purchased the book (rather than a freebie or promotional copy) and don't have a purple (headers, chapter numbers, etc) in the preface then please let O'Reilly know.

If you do want to buy the book I suggest you get it from Amazon. First, it'll save you 10 bucks off the coverprice that you can go spend on a nice frost beverage or three. Second, the sales numbers on Amazon are probably more important than from anywhere else and it gives us better feedback than browsing in a store. (Of course, if you really want to check out the book in a physical store and buy it there we certainly don't want to discourage you! :)

Enough about the book. I'm glad we wrote it and I hope you like it. If you have any questions feel free to email me. If you don't have the book (or don't have it yet :) you can read several of the hacks up on the official Swing Hacks site for free. If you have your own Swing related hacks you'd like to contribute then you can send them here.

Thanks for all of your support. Without your positive feedback here on Java.net we never could have written the book.

- Josh

Comments

• I attended your talk at JavaOne (it was very good btw), so that inspired me to go buy the book. I am very happy with the book, I like the way you lay out the examples they are easy to follow and give a lot of good insights. I am having a slight problem with Hack #8 in Chapter 1 about animating Transitions between Tabs. I decided to test your sample code with our application and then maybe do my own animation. Unfortunately it seems to have a slight visual bug. When you click on the next tab sometimes you see it flash the new screen before kicking in the animation. I have seen this with both the InOutPane and the VenetianPane. Do you have any idea why I would be seeing this?

  Posted by: haskovec on July 18, 2005 at 03:44 PM

• I am one of those who was disappointed in the book, sorry! I mean I was really excited about getting it, but felt let down.

  My review is at: http://www.codecraig.com/weblog ...which has links to ellioth's review as well as another review.

  Sorry it just didn't fit my needs as expected. And I do have the correct copy.

  Posted by: codecraig on July 20, 2005 at 05:30 AM

• As the positive reviewer on Amazon, I was a bit surprised at some of the vitriol expressed by others. After reading their reviews, I kind of wonder if perhaps I know a lot less about Swing than I thought I did. Because according to them only novices would find anything of use in your book. I'll stick by my review and add this, it's a lot easier to critique a book then to write one. Don't let them get you down ;-)

  Oh, and your explanation of the printing problems was enlightening. Explains why my copy had the low production value. Unfortunately, I did buy mine from Amazon, so there must be a lot of the bad ones in circulation. Oh well, how much can you expect for $20 :-(

  
  Marty Backe

  Posted by: mgbacke on July 20, 2005 at 10:38 PM

• I'd like thank you all for your feedback. It's nice to get both praise and honest criticism. The book was intended for the intermediate Swing developer. Someone who is comfortable with Swing's basic uses and would like to push it a little further. There are some more advanced Swing developers who already know a lot and won't get as much out of the book (which is quite likely among the crowd who hang out on java.net and post comments. After all, you have to really like Java to go to a website dedicated to it, right? :)

  All of that said, given that there is a rich community of Swing knowledge here, what would you say to creating some sort of forum for Swing Hacks where we could discuss hacks in the book, make improvements, and post new ideas we each have?

  Thank you all for reading!
  - Josh

  Posted by: joshy on July 30, 2005 at 12:38 AM

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