Tutorial on Swing Containers and Controls

Tutorial on Creating Graphical User Interfaces with Swing and AWT

Graphical User Interface, in short GUI is developed using java programming language's toolkits Swing and AWT. AWT also stands for Abstract Windowing Toolkit.

When Java programming language evolved during the year 1994 - 95,  during it's first version, AWT toolkit was introduced. AWT uses OS graphics which breaks the Java law. i.e Java programming language is platform independent. 

Platform independence means, write once and run anywhere. 

AWT toolkit, uses operating system resources. Hence, using AWT library is heavy, that means, using it takes maximum computers processing and computation time and slows down the computers performance.

And also, there are very limited widgets or components available. Since the native OS also provides limited widgets for Java programming language to use.

To overcome these all issues, the Java team has invented a toolkit or library called, Swing. Swing is included in JFC, which stands for Java Foundation Classes.

Swing is developed using 100 percent java code and does not depend on native OS's resources at all.

Graphics developed with Swing are very quick in response time and has elegant look. And also, Look and Feel is customizable according to the need.

I write about Look and Feel, also called as PLAF [Pluggable Look And Feel] in Swing terminology, in near future.

I also write about Swing containers and components, How actually components and containers can be created by following best coding practices and adding and changing the components' default properties etc. in coming articles.

One of  the best usecases of using Swing library is, Netbeans IDE. Netbeans is industry endorsed for developing desktop application using AWT and Swing toolkits from Java programming language.

You can download Netbeans IDE from here:

                                         Apache NetBeans Releases

To begin, learning Swing toolkit is installing Netbeans and writing Swing code using Netbeans. 

That is all for now. Happy coding :)

    

  

 

Tutorial on Java program for swapping 2 integers

Swapping 2 integers with temporary variable

Swapping Technique:

If there are two variables with some integer values and needed to swap variable a's value in variable b and b's value to a

Swapping two integers with temporary variable is as easy 10 lines of code. It does not include any mathematical operations.

Example:

If variable a has value 10 and variable b has value 20, the algorithm, supposed to swap values in such a way, that variable a will have value 20 and variable b will have 10.

int a = 10; // variable a has 10 as a value

int b = 20; // variable b has 20 as a value

Code

package com.allabtjava.alg;

/**

* @author Nagasharath K

*/

public class Swap_With_Temp {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int a = 10;

int b = 20;

System.out.println("Variable a has " + a + "and b has " + b + "before swapping");

int temp = 0;

temp = a;

a = b;

b = temp;

System.out.println("After swapping variable a has " + a + " and b has " + b);

}

}

Output:

Variable a has 10 and b has 20 before swapping

After swapping variable a has 20 and b has 10

Swapping 2 integers without temporary variable

Now, let us swap 2 integers without the help of temporary variable.

This is possible by storing the difference between variable a and variable b and do the simple

mathamatical operation as done in the below program

Example:

package com.allabtjava.alg;

/**

* @author NAGASHARATH K

*/

public class Swap_Without_Temp {

public static void main(String[] args) {

int a = 70;

int b = 50;

System.out.println("Variable a has " + a + " and b has " + b + " before swapping");

int c = b - a;

a = a + c;

b = b - c;

System.out.println("After swapping variable a has " + a + " and b has " + b);

}

}

Output:

Variable a has 70and b has 50 before swapping

After swapping variable a has 50 and b has 70

SUDOKU - Just for fun!

On the launch of an application user is presented with three options: Easy, Medium and Hard. Easy has 30 numbers on board, medium has 50 and hard option will have only 20 numbers on board. Once the difficulty is selected user will be presented with a Sudoku board. Below the board there will be numbers which one can select to fill the blank spaces on the board. Note that only the correct number can be placed on the specific spot. Once the user fills all the blank spots on the board, means he has correctly solved the puzzle.