Chapter 8. Event Handling

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• Basics of Event Handling

• The AWT Event Hierarchy

• Semantic and Low-Level Events in the AWT

• Low-Level Event Types

• Actions

• Multicasting

• Implementing Event Sources

Event handling is of fundamental importance to programs with a graphical user interface. To implement user interfaces, you must master the way in which Java handles events. This chapter explains how the Java AWT event model works. You will see how to capture events from the mouse and the keyboard. This chapter also shows you how to use the simplest GUI elements, such as buttons. In particular, this chapter discusses how to work with the basic events generated by these components. The next chapter shows you how to put together the most common of the components that Swing offers, along with a detailed coverage of the events they generate.

NOTE

Java 1.1 introduced a much improved event model for GUI programming. We do not cover the deprecated 1.0 event model in this chapter.

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