Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days, Professional Reference Edition (2nd Edition) - Hardcover

Lemay, Laura; Cadenhead, Rogers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0672320614 ISBN 13: 9780672320613

Publisher: Sams, 2001

Synopsis

Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days continues to be one of the most popular, best-selling Java tutorials on the market. It has been acclaimed for its clear and personable writing, for its extensive use of examples, and for its logical and complete organization. The Professional Reference Edition of the book includes an extra seven chapters covering advanced topics like object serialization, remote method invocation, accessibility, security, JavaBeans, JDBC, and advanced data structures – as well as a 200-page reference section detailing the most commonly used aspects of the Java language. This edition of the book has been updated and revised to cover version 1.3 of the Java 2 Standard Edition SDK, and the book's CD-ROM includes a fully functional Java compiler, as well as the book¿s source code and a collection of third-party Java development tools and utilities.

About this title

Review

Newly revised for some of the latest Sun JDK 1.3 standards, the second edition of Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days provides a refreshingly compact and useful tour of Java suitable for anyone who wants to master this powerful programming language quickly.

Currently, Java has some 2,000 classes and over 24,000 methods and properties. Instead of covering a laundry list of features, this book concentrates on what's really important, and keeps your attention with short, clever examples, many of which use names and examples drawn from pop culture or historical trivia.

The first week of lessons in the book comprises an easily digestible tutorial on basic Java, with review questions and exercises that will help you start using it on your own. Next comes a tour of the various options for building user interfaces in today's Java, including Swing applets and applications. In addition to basic component programming, you'll learn graphics using the new Java 2D API. (The older Abstract Windowing Toolkit, AWT, isn't covered.) Material on threading, animation, and sound helps you explore Java's multimedia capabilities.

The third and final week of lessons addresses advanced Java APIs and features that extend the reach of Java on the enterprise. After delving into more advanced class design, the book looks at topics like I/O streams in Java and Object Serialization (which allows objects to work with streams). Chapters on security and basic networking (illustrated using a server that generates trivia questions for clients) will let you work with Java on the Internet. The book closes with a chapter on database programming with JDBC. (There's also coverage of the older JDK 1.0 collection classes, which is a little surprising given the book's focus on newer Java 2 standards.)

All in all, Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days provides an efficiently packaged tutorial for learning Java, one that will be appreciated by any beginning Java programmer. The sheer number of classes and APIs in today's Java can be overwhelming. The intelligent and concise series of lessons in this book will help jump-start your knowledge. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview and history of Java
• Introduction to objects
• Class inheritance
• Tutorial for basic Java (including data types and keywords, flow control, and working with objects)
• Arrays
• Basic Java applications
• Methods and constructors
• Introduction to Java applets
• Building Swing user interfaces (basic component types, layout managers, and event processing)
• Java 2D graphics (drawing basic shapes, text output, and fonts)
• Using threads for animation
• Loading and displaying images
• Java Sound (including MIDI files)
• Advanced class design (interfaces, packages, advanced method options)
• Exception handling and security
• Signing JAR files
• File and stream I/O in Java
• Object Serialization and reflection
• Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
• Java networking basics (sockets and servers)
• Building custom UI components with JavaBeans
• Database programming with JDBC
• JDK 1.0 collection classes
• References on the Sun JDK 1.3 (including installation)

About the Author

Rodgers Caldenhead is a writer and Web publisher who has written 10 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours and Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft FrontPage 2000 in 24 Hours, but not Sams Teach Yourself to Tell Time in 10 Minutes. He maintains this book's official Web site at java21pro/.

Laura Lemay is a technical writer and author. After spending six years writing software documentation for various computer companies in Silicon Valley, she decided that writing books would be much more fun. In her spare time, she collects computers, email addresses, interesting hair colors, and non-running motorcycles. She is also the perpetrator of Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week and Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sams
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0672320614
• ISBN 13: 9780672320613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 816