Developing Intranet Applications with Java.

This high-level guide focuses on developing intranet-oriented applications with Java. Java's platform independence makes it ideally suited as a language for intranet applications.

The first third of Developing Intranet Applications with Java isn't strictly about Java. Rather, it's about intranets, with some information about Java development environments and code style. (The author has some novel ideas about pretty-printing.) This may be a selling point for those who have been called upon to set up an intranet and implement Java programs on it all at once; others may consider it filler material.

The cool thing in Developing Intranet Applications with Java is that author Jerry Ablan has put together custom software for both the book and its accompanying CD-ROM. The Java Intranet Framework (JIF) is a set of classes you can use as a base for writing corporate intranet tools. In fact, Ablan goes into great detail about using the JIF to write a conference tool, a benefits-management tool, the electronic equivalent of a magnetic in/out board, a product maintenance tracker, and several other tools. It's interesting to see how the JIF facilitates these products and how you can expand upon them. If you want to see, in detail, how one programmer created a suite of intranet tools, this book is the one for you.