Marcus Zarra

I'm sure we've all heard it before: Java on the client is slow; Swing is slow. The reality is that Sun has made great progress in increasing the speed of Swing and Java on the client. However, it's up to developers to demonstrate that Java has indeed improved to the point of usability and viability on the client. To do this, the code needs to be very lean and clean. One of the original problems with GUI creation was the reliance upon Visual Development Tools to design and code the GUI. While these VDTs have come a long way in the last few years, I have found that many developers rely so heavily on the VDTs that they've gotten lazy when it comes to coding the actual functionality of the application. The Problem Methods are expensive in terms of execution time. The more me... (more)

Swing, Threads, and Events

I normally spend a few hours every week reading the discussion forums at the Java Developer Network (http://forums.java.sun.com) and find that one of the most common problems is Swing and how it works in a multithreaded environment. I've helped a number of developers in this area when they find that their application stops responding, behaves erratically, or, the most common problem, run... (more)