Java versions

Although

I test the code in this book with several different vendor implementations of

Java, I generally rely on the Sun implementation as a reference when

determining whether behavior is correct.

By

the time you read this, Sun will have released three major versions of Java:

1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 (Sun says it will make a major release about every nine

months!). Version 1.1 represents a significant change to the language and

should probably have been labeled 2.0. (And if 1.1 is such a big change from

1.0, I shudder to think what will justify the number 2.0.) However, it’s

version 1.2 that seems to finally bring Java into the prime time, in particular

where user interface tools are concerned.

This

book covers versions 1.0, 1.1 and selected parts of 1.2, although in situations

where a new approach is clearly superior to the old, I definitely favor the new

approach, often choosing to teach the better approach and completely ignore the

old approach. However, there are some cases where it’s unavoidable to

teach the old approach before the new, in particular with the AWT, since not

only is there a lot of old Java 1.0 code out there, but some platforms still

support only Java 1.0. I will try to be scrupulous about pointing out which

features belong to which version.

One

thing you’ll notice is that I don’t use the sub-revision numbers.

At this writing, the released version of 1.0 from Sun was 1.02 and the released

version of 1.1 was 1.1.5 (Java 1.2 was in beta). In this book I will refer to

|

|