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Sun has a very useful set of articles on thread usage with Swing:

• http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/threads/threads1.html

  "Threads and Swing", which introduced the problem, some of the basic rules, the use of invokeLater() and invokeAndWait(), followed by an example of the use of the SwingWorker class.

• http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/threads/threads2.html

  "Using a Swing Worker Thread: New Ways to Perform Background Tasks", which talks about the SwingWorker class in more detail, especially in relation to how to interrupt a SwingWorker thread.

• http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/threads/threads3.html

  "The Last Word in Swing Threads: Working with Asynchronous Models", which goes into a lot more detail about how you can use SwingWorker in more complex examples.

They introduce a useful class called SwingWorker, which provides some very useful features:

• SwingWorker is an abstract class which you can extend in your own subclass to add useful functionality.
• It allows you to compute a value in a new thread.
• Your subclass will override the construct() method, within which the value will be computed (in the new thread)
• Your subclass can override the finished() method, which is automatically invoked in the event thread at the end of the work performed in computing the value.
• The work performed by a SwingWorker can be interrupted

This version of the SwingWorker class is not part of the Java distribution (and will not be), but it can be downloaded from the above web pages.