Posted by Jeff Dinkins on July 16, 2007 at 03:56 PM PDT #

Posted by Christian Beer on July 17, 2007 at 01:27 AM PDT #

Posted by Mikael Grev on July 17, 2007 at 01:51 AM PDT #

Posted by guest on July 17, 2007 at 04:56 AM PDT #

getContentPane().setLayout(new BoxLayout(getContentPane(), BoxLayout.Y_AXIS));
add(captionLabel);
add(photographLabel);
add(numberLabel);
JPanel buttonBar = new JPanel();
buttonBar.setLayout(new BoxLayout(buttonBar, BoxLayout.X_AXIS));

buttonBar.add(previousButton);
buttonBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
buttonBar.add(nextButton);

add(buttonBar);

setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);

Posted by aberrant on July 17, 2007 at 07:01 AM PDT #

Among them:

* Very ugly GUI, violating Sun's own style guide, e.g. regarding the distance between components, usage of borders, etc.

* Hard-coded sizes in the layout. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

* Requiring a special tool like NetBeans. I don't know if this is a fanboy or a political thing. Whatever it is, it is bad. Don't you have any professional educators at Sun who can tell you a little bit about pedagogic principles?

* Mishandling of text updates in an event handler. From http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/examples/components/IconDemoProject/src/components/IconDemoApp.java

    //User clicked either the next or previous button
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        //Show loading message
        photographLabel.setIcon(null);
        photographLabel.setText("Loading image...");

That text will not be shown right when set here! The comment is misleading. You are still in the EDT. updatePhotograph(Photo photo) later cancels the setting out, in case the program flow for already loaded images is used.

In case the loadImage() branch is used instead, the text will be rendered since the event handler returns. However, it should be the loadImage() method setting the text, and not preactively the actionPerformed() method. For symmetric reasons it should also be the done() method in loadImage() later canceling the message, instead of relying on the flow of execution in the invoked updatePhotograph()

This label display logic is very bad style at best. Such junk code should not be done in a tutorial. Yes, I consider it junk code, particularly for a tutorial. I would not even accept it in rushed production code.

* Unexplained optimization claims like

     // When running  using Java Plug-in, getResourceAsStream
    // is more efficient than getResource

and then incredibly complicating the code of createAppImageIcon() is also not beneficial in teaching people.

createAppImageIcon() could be a few easy to understand lines instead of the current mess:

ImageIcon i = null;
URL url = new ... getResource(...);
if(url != null) {
  i = new ImageIcon(url);
} else {
...
 

Oh, by the way, what is the point in making the method static?

Oh, oh, by the way, the usage of a fixed-size buffer which must match be large enough to hold the largest image is also extremely bad style.

* Nesting the Photo class inside class IconDemoApp also doesn't buy you anything.

* The writing style for the // comments is bad. This is typical for IDE-only users. In an IDE one can still read comments interspersed without visible separation into the code due to syntax highlighting. But they look very bad when one (a scholar ...) studies the code as-is. You really hate your scholars, do you? Instead of

sdfjsdlkjfsdklfl
sdfsdjfsldjfkl
// sdkljfklsdj
sdkljfklsdjflk
lkfhjsdfshf 

sdfjsdlkjfsdklfl
sdfsdjfsldjfkl
//
// sdkljfklsdj
//
sdkljfklsdjflk
lkfhjsdfshf 

I could go on for some time. But Sun hasn't cared for six major releases. Please let the examples be done by professionals, not by the intern. Please follow Sun's own rules (JavaDoc, GUI style guide, etc.). Please don't add optimizations if this isn't the point of the demo. Please get the code properly reviewed.

If not, then at least don't be surprised that there are so many badly done GUI applications out there and that so few people get Java GUI programming.

Demo code like this perverts the goal of the whole tutorial. Assuming of course the goal is to teach people proper Java GUI programming. The goal should not be to squeeze as many effects in as few lines of code as possible, or to get away with the most simple constructs that just happen to work accidentally.

Posted by Kauer on July 17, 2007 at 10:25 AM PDT #

Posted by Jerry on July 18, 2007 at 07:29 AM PDT #

Posted by Fred on July 18, 2007 at 03:23 PM PDT #

Posted by aberrant on July 19, 2007 at 12:33 PM PDT #

Posted by Viswanath on July 19, 2007 at 12:33 PM PDT #

update to the Swing Tutorial, a decision was taken to convert a number

Posted by runescape money on November 10, 2007 at 06:39 PM PST #