What's and What's Old? The History of the Tutorial

Robinson Crusoe's Birthday, 30 September 02 --

• We added a new lesson! Regular Expressions covers the java.util.regex API introduced in the 1.4 release of the Java^TM 2 Platform Standard Edition. Regular expressions can be used as a tool to search, edit, or manipulate text or data. This package uses Perl-like syntax, but our lesson doesn't assume that you've had previous experience with regular expressions.
• The Tutorial front page has completely changed, and the java.sun.com one now looks different from the downloaded one. The content of the two pages remains nearly identical.
• We added a search box to the Tutorial front page. The search link on each content page has changed to use the same search engine as the front page.
• We retired the Servlets trail, since it's out of date and other tutorials have updated servlet coverage. For links to the newer coverage and to a downloadable form of the old trail, see the old trailhead.
• We added a page of printing tips: Improving Printing Performance. It includes strategies that you can use starting in both 1.3 and 1.4.1.
• We added a file describing the license for our code examples. Unless otherwise licensed, all our code is available under this license.
• Notice is hereby given: We plan to retire the Trail Map.
• We're in the process of updating the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail to 1.4. You might notice some changes or notes about changes we plan to make.
• Lots of miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

• The 1.4 version of the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition was released recently. We're in the process of updating the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail to 1.4. The Full-Screen Exclusive Mode API covers a brand new API in the 1.4 release; programmers who write games or other graphic-intensive applications should read this trail.
• Lots of miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

• We removed our survey from the Web site. We want to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses. Your feedback will help us improve the Tutorial and plan for the future.
• Lots of miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos, including updates in the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail.

• New survey! Please spend a few minutes filling out our survey. Your feedback will help us improve the Tutorial and plan for the future. We've also included some localization questions to help us learn what languages you'd like us to provide translations in.
• Lots of miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

• New lesson! User Interfaces that Swing: A Quick Start Guide. is a quick start guide to using Swing components to build user interfaces. It is built around several progressively complicated examples. (This lesson started life as a chapter in our latest book, The Java Tutorial, Third Edition.)
• Another new lesson! For programmers who write games or other graphic-intensive apps, check out the new Full-Screen Exclusive Mode API lesson. This API will be included in the 1.4 release of the Java 2 Standard Edition.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

• Completely updated the I/O: Reading and Writing (but no 'rithmetic) lesson.
• Reorganized the order of lessons in the Essential trail.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Rolling Blackouts Release, 3 Feb 01 --

• Added Questions and Exercises for all trails included in the new book, The Java Tutorial Third Edition.
• Added new book pages to support the new book, The Java Tutorial Third Edition. (The TOC includes a handy set of links to all the answers for the Questions & Exercises.)
• Updated the Getting Started trail. We updated the material for 1.3 and added Questions and Exercises.
• Updated the Interfaces and Packages lesson. We updated the material for 1.3 and added Questions and Exercises.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Edvard Munch's Birthday, 12 Dec 00 --

• Updated the Learning the Java Language trail. We updated the material for 1.3 and added Questions and Exercises to the Language Basics section.
• Updated the servlets trail to refer to the Tomcat 3.x and 4.0 implementations. These releases support the 2.2 and 2.3 versions of Java Servlet technology.
• The Tomcat version of the Servlets Bookstore Example can now be downloaded as a zip file.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Friday the 13th, 13 Oct 00 --

• Added information to the IDL trail about the idlj compiler, which is part of the 1.3 release. Updated links to the idlj compiler, its documentation, and the OMG site.
• Updated the servlets trail to refer to Java Servlet 2.2 API Docs.
• Updated the Bingo example to fix some thread safety issues.
• Updated the API links in most of the basic trails to point to the 1.3 versions (instead of 1.2).
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Tutorial Fifth Anniversary, 31 May 00 --

• Added Werner van Mook's Mac adaptation of the instructions for writing and compiling your first programs: First Cup of Java (Mac OS).
• Added questions and exercises to the end of the Getting Started trail and to the first three lessons in the Learning the Java Language trail.
• Rewrote portions of the first lessons in the Learning the Java Language trail.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Zeppo Marx's Birthday (1901), 25 February 00 --

• Did reconstructive work on the Learning the Java Language trail. Lots of new examples added. Cleaned up.
• Fixed a subtle bug in SwingWorker source code. See How to Use Threads in the Swing trail.
• Adjusted JTable page, examples to reflect 1.3. See How to Use Tables in the Swing trail.
• Miscellaneous fixes to broken links and typos.

Thanksgiving (USA), 24 November 99 --

• Added a new lesson to the JavaBeans(tm) trail, Using the BeanContext API, that covers The Extensible Runtime Containment and Services Protocol.
• Added some information about JTable in 1.3 in the Swing trail. Also, added a new 1.3 JTable example.
• Began updating and rewriting the Learning the Java Language trail. This work includes adding exercises and questions to each section.
• Added the glossary from the java.sun.com website and began linking terms to it.
• Did a partial conversion to our new icon scheme for identifying the target of our links.
  • looks up a glossary term
  • links to a .java file
  • link to a page within the javadocs hosted at java.sun.com
  • links to a page outside of the tutorial
  • links to a page in a different lesson within the tutorial
  Intra-tutorial links (black) update the page in the current browser window, while extra-tutorial links (colored links) bring up a new browser window.

Vegetarian Day (World), 1 October 99 --

• Removed the survey. Thank you for your responses.
• Added a really big index that lists every content page in the tutorial in order.
• Added a resources page that lists Java programming resources outside of the tutorial.
• Added Your First Cup of Java (for UNIX).
• Added feedback form. Please use this form to contact us instead of sending mail directly. It will help direct your mail to the right person.
• Modified our tools to provide automatic next and previous links, automatic page titles, and automatic page headers and footers. This change should be largely unnoticeable to readers except that these page elements should contain fewer errors and inconsistencies.
• Created a tool that automatically generated trail-level TOC pages. This change should be largely unnoticeable to readers except that these pages should contain fewer errors and inconsistencies.
• Fixed various broken links, typographical, and other errors.
• Put all of the images on the Swing Components Visual Index.
• Updated API links to point to Java 2 SDK docs.
• Thanks to our two delightful summer interns, Ray and Indra, we were able to do a lot of clean up including fixing omissions, making clarifications, adding examples, and so on.
• We did a pass and cleaned up most of the pending issues. The only remaining pendings are in the BINGO lesson, which has not been completed, and in one of the book pages for the Second Edition. We hope, but do not promise, to clean up the remaining ones for the next tutorial update.

National Smile Week :), 3 August 99 --

• Added the 2D applets to the list of applets page, for a total of 77 applets in the Tutorial. Also, provided Java Plug-in tags for running the 2D applets.
• Added detailed instructions for compiling and running a Java program in Windows.
• Posted a survey.
• Created a tutorial announcements mailing list to which tutorial readers can subscribe. See Get Announcements about The java Tutorial.
• Added common problems pages to some trails that didn't have them.
• Clarified and fixed various errors reported by readers.

Fiesta de San Fermin (Spain), 7 July 99 --

• Fixed most of the pending issues in the Swing trail. Fixed a few pending issues in other trails.
• Fixed some problems with one example in the security trail.
• Made some minor modifications to the page format and did some clean up on our tools. This has minor repercussions for API links.
• Cleaned up the image directories and removed unused images. This reduced the size of the tutorial by about 1.5 Meg.
• Added coverage of JSDK 2.1 in the servlets trail.
• Modified our coverage of finalization in the Java language trail and in effected examples.
• Fixed typos, broken links, a couple of broken applets, and other reader reported problems.
• Updated the instructions for running the BINGO program.
• Became a mirror for WinHelp version of tutorial.

Memorial Day (USA), 28 May 99 --

• Announced the Swing book.
• Due to overwhelming reader feedback, we changed our format again. We removed the left-hand border and modified the headers and footers to include a link to the search page.
• Fixed typos and other errors in the Learning Java, Essential Classes, and Custom Networking trails in response to reader e-mail.

Lei Day (Hawaii) update, 5 May 99 -- We made some changes to our new page format in resonse to reader feedback.

• Because of reader feedback, we added a navigation area to the bottom of each page.
• Implemented a max width of 460 for images to prevent large images from creating a page that is too wide.

Lei Day (Hawaii), 1 May 99 --

• Modified our page format. It now includes search on every content page.
• Created examples indexes for all examples in the Swing trail. If readers like it, we plan to do this for all trails.
• Reviewed the code for all example programs in the Swing trail.
• Did a final pass in preparation for converting from HTML to book format. This included everything from fixing typos to tweaking comments in source files to adding a few paragraphs of new information.
• Added a second custom layout manager example: GraphPaperLayout.
• Added new examples and content to the 2d trail.

World Culture Day, 12 March 99 -- We marched through the Swing trail preparing for copyedit. Here's what we did:

• Internally reviewed and edited all .html pages in the Swing trail in the first 7 lessons. In some cases, this amounted to a major rewrite.
• Added *a lot* of material to the component how-to pages that covers aspects of the components that had previously been omitted. Typically, the additional material covers more advanced component features.
• Reviewed example code, ran all examples, and modified as appropriate.
• Researched and resolved many pending issues. (Some still remain.)
• Performed "example audits" and updated the tables of examples.
• Reviewed and updated API tables everywhere.
• Fixed various bugs and clarity issues reported by readers.
• Filled in "glue" pages.
• Added information about common problems in many places.
• Tied sections together better by adding links.
• Made the layout and events sections similar to how-to pages by adding API and examples tables.

Joe's 40th Birthday, 21 Jan 99

• Updated the drawing lesson to Swing.
• Made various improvements to the Swing trail.
• Some front page cleanup.

Winter Solstice, 21 Dec 98

• Added Search Capability!
• Added preliminary draft of Converting to Swing lesson.
• Added links to resources and examples for Drag 'n Drop.
• Some image clean up, which shrunk the tutorial by about .75 Megs.
• Made various improvements to the Swing trail,
• Fixed various broken link and typos.

Enlightenment of the Buddha (Japan), 8 Dec 98

• Minor typo and broken link fixes.
• Getting first two lessons in Swing trail ready for copyedit.
• Removed all .class files from tutorial except those necessary for running applets. This shrank the tutorial by 1.5 Megs.

Day of the Artisans (Mexico), 4 Dec 98

• Note: CD-ROM build. This is the version of the tutorial that appears on the CD-ROM for The Java Tutorial Continued.
• Integrated all copyedits and other changes from the continued book into 5 trails: overview, internationalization, sound, 2D, and RMI.
• Made lots of little improvements to the Swing trail, especially in swingOverview and swingStart. Reorganized material about text.
• Updated programs to use Swing 1.1 (from Swing 1.0.3 and Swing 1.1 Beta 3) and JDK 1.2.

Aron's Birthday, 6 Nov 98

• Substantially reorganized the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail. The Swing-based User Interface trail replaces the old AWT-based User Interface trail, which is available only by download. We still have some work to do to complete the transition. Please bear with us during construction!
• Miscellaneous fixes to typos, broken links, and program bugs.

Universal Children's Day, 5 Oct 98

• Converted the examples and text in Laying Out Components within a Container to use Swing.
• Several updates to the Using Swing Components lesson.
• Converted many applets to use Java Plug-in.
• Updated to JDK 1.1.7 and Swing 1.1 Beta 3.
• Converted old UI trail to a downloadable archive.
• Removed reference objects trail.
• Miscellaneous fixes to typos, broken links, and program bugs.

Labor Day Release, 7 Sept 98

• Added Overview of the JDK.
• Added Java Sound trail.
• Added Working with Java 2D Graphics trail.
• Added JDBC Database Access trail.
• Added Using Java RMI trail.
• Reviewed and edited Programming with Java IDL trail.
• Added new material and examples to the Using Swing Components lesson.

Laine's Birthday Release, An Update, 14 Aug 98

• Added Programming with Java IDL trail.
• Added Security in JDK 1.2 trail.
• Reviewed and edited various trails and lesson.
• Added new material and examples to the Using Swing Components lesson.
• Fixed miscellaneous typos and broken links. Made minor improvements to text and examples all over the place.

Laine's Birthday Release, 3 Aug 98

• Added Collections trail.
• Added Servlets trail.
• Added The Java Extensions Mechanism trail.
• Added Reference Objects trail.
• Added new material and examples to the Using Swing Components lesson. Completed technical reviews for many pages and integrated engineering feedback.
• Reviewed and edited javabeans and jar trails.
• Fixed miscellaneous typos and broken links. Made minor improvements to text and examples all over the place.

The Summer Solstice Release, 26 June 98

• Added a lot of new material and examples to the Using Swing Components lesson.
• Updated information about hashCode and equals.
• Added a bios page that contains information about our contributing authors.
• Reviewed and edited internationalization, reflection, and native trails.
• Fixed miscellaneous typos and broken links. Improved some text and some examples.

Nettle Day (UK), 29 May 98

• Added JAR trail.
• Added 4 new topics to the internationalization trail: comparing strings, text boundaries, conversions, and a checklist for internationalizing existing programs.
• Added demo programs to the date and number formatting lessons.
• Reorganized JavaBeans trail.
• Added a lot of new material and examples to the Using Swing Components lesson.
• Reviewed native methods trail and made associated changes and fixes.
• Fixed miscellaneous typos and broken links. Improved some text and some examples.

Arbor Day, 24 April 98

• WooHoo! New front page! New Trail map!
• New look for trail-level TOC.html files. Also, removed lesson-level TOC.html files. Instead we now provide a link to the appropriate place within the trail-level TOC.html files.
• Continued to add new pages to the Using Swing Components lesson.
• Added a new lesson to the internationalizaton trail covering formatting.
• Added trail on reflection.
• Added some information to the native methods trail for Mac programmers.
• Fixed typos, broken links, and various other minor problems with content
• Removed the old internationalization trail.
• Removed old native methods trail...provide a downloadable archive instead.
• Updated errata page for second edition of the book.

The Vernal Equinox, 20 March 98

• Changed the background color to white.
• Finished integrating figures from the new, second, edition of the book. Figures and images are now kept together at the top-level instead of sprinkled throughout the lesson directories.
• Added book.html and related pages for the second editon of the book. Changed the page design of the book.html and related pages for the first edition to match the second edition.
• Did a bunch of work behind the scenes on our tools and processes. This is the first update of the tutorial from our new workspace with our new makefiles and build process.
• Because of our lovely new tools, we can now easily provide a downloadable archive of all of the examples in the book. See Download the Tutorial for the ftp links.
• Fixed various typos and other minor problems with content.
• Updated the Swing material relating to the JDK 1.2.

The long awaited update!-- this is a major update of the tutorial. Almost every file has been touched in some way.

This release of the online tutorial corresponds with the release of the 2nd edition of The Java Tutorial book and is the version of the online tutorial that appears on the CD-ROM that accompanies that book.

The changes are in progress, but to a large extent we have integrated 1.1 information into the existing trails, lessons, and examples. This is in sharp contrast to the 1.1 notes that were littered throughout the previous version of the tutorial and were, admittedly, somewhat confusing.

Also, we are in the process of integrating copyedit and other changes made to the book version, into the online version. This has been completed thoroughly in some areas of the online tutorial, and spottily in other areas. We will continue with this process throughout the coming months.

New lessons in this tutorial that first appeared in print in the 2nd edition of The Java Tutorial book:

• The Java Phenomenon
• Migrating to 1.1
• A Preview of Things to Come

New trails for this version of the tutorial that haven't yet made it to print:

• Added a Putting It All Together trail that provides a large, real-world, client/server example and analyzes it.
• Got a totally new JavaBeans Tutorial by Andy Quinn!

• One of the goals of the tutorial is to document the latest and greatest from JavaSoft as it is released. To this end, we've added a lesson about Using Swing Components. The Swing release is an early release of part of the JFC. This information is only available from the Java Tutorial.
• Added a trail, Java Security 1.1, covering the new 1.1 security APIs.
• Updated the The JavaBeans(tm) Tutorial by Greg Voss.
• Promoted Writing Global Programs to a trail. This trail is still in progress, but it contains new material including several excellent demos from Taligent.
• Added information about the 1.1 release in our To 1.1 -- And Beyond! trail.
• Made the usual fixes to broken links, typos, and other errata.

14 May 97

We improved and added more 1.1 information in existing sections. We added more examples of and information about the various types of event listeners to Handling Events. We also fixed the AroundTheWorld applet used in Writing Global Programs.

28 April 97

We added a new trail, To 1.1 -- And Beyond!, which is the headquarters for features added to the JDK after 1.0. Also, the Learning the Java Language and Essential Java Classes trails now have notes that point out material that is affected by 1.1. And finally, we reorganized our top-level files to make them more accessible.

Added a brand new trail introducing JavaBeans! This trail, JavaBeans Tutorial, written by Greg Voss, shows you the ins and outs of developing programs using the JavaBeans technology.

• Our new "guest author" program debuts in this release of the tutorial with a completely new trail about writing native methods by Beth Stearns. Check it out: Using the Java Native Interface (JNI).
• Merged copyediting changes from the book into the on-line version in these two trails: Getting Started and Writing Applets.
• Updated Writing Global Programs to work with the FCS JDK 1.1 release.
• The usual miscellaneous fixes.

Miscellaneous fixes. Also, added a new lesson describing new features of the JDK for Writing Global Programs.

This draft is the version on which the book version is based. The book and online versions aren't exactly the same -- for example, none of the copyeditor's changes have made it into the online tutorial yet. Also, the online tutorial's figures haven't been updated to be the same as those in the book. Notable content changes since the fifth draft include:

• Finished the Common Problems pages.
• Added information on the Macintosh JDK.
• Added an applet anatomy section to Getting Started.
• Improved the talk server example in the applet communication lesson.

Many pages in this draft have been rewritten or expanded upon. (If you've sent us comments and don't see them reflected in this draft, please don't be insulted -- we haven't finished incorporating reviewer comments.) Some of the notable changes include:

• Revised Application Anatomy lesson and moved it to the Getting Started trail: The Anatomy of a Java Application. We plan to write an equivalent section for applets.
• Did major rewrites of the following lessons in the Java trail: The Nuts and Bolts of the Java Language and Objects and Classes in Java.
• Added new pages to the applet overview: Adding an Applet to an HTML Page and Summary.
• Beefed up the applet threads pages: Threads in Applets.
• Added a discussion of peers to the UI trail: Details of the Component Architecture.
• Added material to the native methods trail, Integrating Native Methods into Java Programs, including passing data into and out of native methods and accessing Java objects.
• Removed some trails: comparison to C/C++, troubleshooting, and tools. This information has been (or will be) incorporated into other trails/lessons.

Among the normal bug, typo and broken link fixes, this draft includes revisions to many of our old trails and lessons, plus this new material:

• Added a new lesson to Integrating Native Methods into Java Programs trail.
• Added new material to and/or wrote from scratch 4 lessons in the Writing Applets trail. Including: Creating an Applet User Interface, Communicating with Other Programs, Understanding Applet Capabilities and Restrictions, and Finishing an Applet. (The first three have since been reorganized into two trails: Taking Advantage of the Applet API and Practical Considerations when Writing Applets.

Among the normal bug, typo and broken link fixes, this draft includes revisions to many of our old trails and lessons, plus this new material:

• Added a lot of new material to Creating an Applet User Interface.
• Added new lessons to the Creating a User Interface trail. Including:
  • Laying Out Components within a Container Please note that 3 pages are still under construction.
  • Using Components, the GUI Building Blocks Each component now has a page describing how to use it.
  • Working with Graphics There's now information on how to draw primitive graphics (including text) and images, plus information on performing animation. The animation pages include information on how to eliminate flashing, using update() and double buffering. They also have information on using MediaTracker.
• Added a new trail: Custom Networking
• Added a new lesson, Input and Output Streams to the Essential Java Classes trail.

• Updated links to point to new FCS1.0 JDK release.
• Fixed bugs where some applets and sources files were missing.
• Miscellaneous fixes of typos, bugs, and broken links.

• Changed the Creating a User Interface trail to reflect the event changes introduced in Beta2. Specifically, keyboard event handlers now have to return false, unless they want the event to be dropped. The Conversion example program and the overview were affected.
• Revised the structure of the tutorial to reflect what we're going to be able to finish by the time the book version is due to the printer.
• Added a very preliminary lesson on Java's object features-- Java Objects.
• Fixed various typos, bugs and broken links.

12 Dec 95 -- Updated the Second DRAFT

• Made the few changes necessary to reflect Beta2 instead of Beta.
• Fixed various typos, bugs and broken links.
• Added a new lesson, Handling Errors using Exceptions, in the Essential Java Classes trail.

13 Nov 95 -- Updated the Second DRAFT

• Made the few changes necessary to reflect Beta instead of Pre-Beta.
• Changed the name of this document from "The Java Programmer's Guide" to "The Java Language Tutorial: Object-Oriented Programming for the Internet." Why the long name? This document is going to be published as a book, and we wanted to make sure the title was as descriptive as possible, without requiring much prior knowledge of the potential buyer.
• Added ALT text to our link graphics, so that people using non-graphical browsers can understand the information the graphic was conveying.
• Added a new lesson, Laying Out Components Within a Container, in the Creating a User Interface trail.

2 Oct 95 -- Released the Second DRAFT

• Everything was updated to reflect the new APIs (except for The "run:" Protocol Handler and The "text/plain" Content Handler in the Getting Started trail).
• We fixed many typos, clarified many obfuscations, fixed broken links and miscommunications.
• We got a face-lift with new icons and a new page design.
• And, we added these trails and lessons:
  • The Writing Applets trail has a new lesson: Overview of Applets which describes how applets work and how you use the Applet class to create an applet.
  • The new Creating a User Interface trail has two new lessons: Overview of UI Elements which introduces you to the objects that the Java development environment provides for building UIs, and Laying Out Components within a Container which tells you how to use each of the Components provided in the AWT.
  • We've also added the Integrating Native Methods into Java Programs trail that shows you how to integrate native methods into your Java programs.
  • And finally, we've added two new lessons: Threads of Control and Object-Oriented Programming Concepts.

18 May 95

Released the First DRAFT