Rich clients is a term commonly associated with desktop applications as opposed to web client apps which run off of a server. Rich client applications have a very "rich" user experience, taking advantage of native facilities of the users desktop computer to provide more robust and full-featured application experience. "Filthy Rich Clients" is a term the authors created to refer to applications that are so graphically rich that they ooze cool. The keys to these clients are graphical and animated effects that provide ways of enhancing the user experience of the application through more attractive GUIs and dynamic effects. This book is about building better, more effective and cooler desktop application using Java tools. Graphical effects, especially animated ones, can be overdone creating an application that would overload the senses. The authors show how to enrich the graphics and animate effectively, making sure to enrich applications in sensible ways. Designed to be informal, fun and most of all, useful, this book is great for any developer working with Java to build desktop applications.