Debugging gui events is usually not possible with regular line per line debugging and is done mostly by tracing.
For debugging code that relies on Java swing events like drag and drop, mouse moving, etc., having something similar to code below is very useful:
public boolean isMouseAboveHeaderPanel() {
System.out.println("HeaderPanel.isMouseAboveHeaderPanel() called from: "
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getClassName() + "."
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getMethodName());
// ...
}In this way you trace not only current function but also you got information from where you entered that function. Of course to make things easier you should make some kind of a shortcut for entering this trace line. In Eclipse you can do that with code template:
System.out.println("${enclosing_type}.${enclosing_method}() called from: "
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getClassName() + "."
+ Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()[2].getMethodName());This helped me in lot of situations, I hope that it will help you as well.
General, Java
debugging, gui, Java
Dynamic languages are very popular at this time and you probably had insight into at least one of them (Ruby, Python, Groovy).
If you are bound to Java platform the best way to “be dynamic” IMHO is to work with Groovy.
Apart from the http://groovy.codehaus.org/ where you can find documentation, getting started examples etc. there are many blogs around that blog about groovy.
My favorite (although very slow) is Andres Almiray’s blog. He mostly blogs about griffon and groovy and has nice tutorials and examples. There I found info about many open source libraries I never heard of but which are quite useful, for example: FEST, Glazed list, Swing clarity, etc.
Try Groovy cause it’s groovy 
I felt like when I run my first program at elementary school and it wrote “Ninja” on the screen
Java, groovy
groovy, Java
If you are needing behavior ‘as though a real browser was scraping and using the page’ HtmlUnit is definitely the best option available. It was designed for testing websites but works great for screen scraping and navigating through multiple pages. It takes care of cookies and other session-related stuff and can execute (if you want it to) the Javascript in the page.
I’ve personally tried several other tools from this list (Jericho, Web Harvest) but neither of them is as good as this library. For example, writing a screen scraper with Web Harvest is an easy task, but badly formatted pages cause xml parser to break and this happened to me a lot of times. Jericho is ok but it took me much more coding to achieve the same as with HtmlUnit.
Take a look at HtmlUnit getting started and start scraping in no time.
Java
Java, Javascript, library, screen scraping, site scraping
Pushing-pixels by Kirill Grouchnikov is a dynamic blog on GUIs with a special attention to swing. It has weekly digest on popular swing links and is good place to start when searching for news in that field.
Java, Links
gui, Java, link, swing
Ok, lets recommend resources in following categories: ebooks, blogs, forums.
Ebooks:
The JavaSeries is supported, endorsed, and authored by the creators of the Java technology at Sun Microsystems, Inc. It is the official place to go for complete, expert, and definitive information on Java technology. The books in this Series provide the inside information you need to build effective, robust, and portable applications and applets. The Series is an indispensable resource for anyone targeting the Java 2 platform.
Actually this quote is 100% true.
Blogs:
The recommendation goes to Artima.
Artima Developer is an online community where developers learn from experts in the software industry as well as interact, share information, and learn from each other.
Forum:
Javaranch - In two words - great forum. There are lot of interesting discussions at all levels (from beginner to expert). Nearly 200,000 members. Book writers are frequent forum visitors.
Java, Links
blog, ebook, forum, Java
