Kathy Walrath's Blog

The Java Tutorial: Updated at Last!

Almost a year since its last revision, The Java Tutorial has been updated again. Most of the changes are in the basic trails — the ones all new programmers might need. But even if you're not a beginner (actually, especially if you're not) the Tutorial team would like your feedback on the new stuff.

The history page says what's changed. Most of the differences aren't terribly noticeable — minor updates from 1.3 to 5.0, new figures, etc. However, there are some new pages the team would like you to check out. They include:

Working with Manifest Files: The Basics

A series of pages telling you how to specify a main class in a JAR file, seal a JAR file, and perform other tasks that require modifying a JAR file's manifest.

The "Static Import" Construct

Covers the 5.0 feature that lets you refer to static members of other classes without using prefixes. (This can be a dangerous feature, so use it wisely!)

Chained Exceptions

Shows you how to use chained exceptions (a 1.4 feature) to avoid losing exception data when rethrowing an exception.

Thread Pools

Describes how to use this feature, which is part of the concurrency utilities added in 5.0. (Most of the concurrency utilities are for "rocket scientists", but thread pools are more generally useful.)

Generics

The new home of Gilad Bracha's Generics tutorial.

Expect more updates soon. They'll add coverage of other post-1.3 features such as for-each, enums, and so on. Also, Getting Started will cover Mac OS X. And finally, the writers are working on something readers have requested for a long time: a completely new deployment section, which will include information on Java Web Start (for applications) and Java Plug-in (for applets).

To give your feedback to the Tutorial team, use the Feedback Form link that's at the upper right of most pages. Thanks for your support!

Comments

• Hi Kathy,

  Great to see the tutorial updated again (and also great to see Sun's continued commitment to it).

  When will a downloadable version be available?

  Ian.

  Posted by: ifairman on February 17, 2005 at 05:31 AM

• Rocket scientists, :-)

  I can definitely appreciate the challenge of making tutorials, especially for some of these packages. I've long held that it is the only thing harder than creating good source documentation.

  As we see with so many Java libraries recently:

  
  It is very easy to make simple things complicated, but it is very difficult to make complex things simple.

  
  Thanks for valiant efforts, they are really helping our community to grow.

  John

  Posted by: cajo on February 17, 2005 at 07:39 AM

• 
  To Ian: The downloadable bundles were supposed to be up (we built them and put them in place on the staging machine). We'll look into why they didn't make it out to the server. And we'll make sure the download page gets updated. Thanks for letting us know about this problem!

  To John: Thanks for the encouraging words!

  -k-
  

  Posted by: walrath on February 17, 2005 at 08:39 AM

• The downloadable bundles are now up (have been since this
  afternoon, Pacific time). Note: They're in a different
  place than before, so go to the download page to get the new URLs. Also, some images that were missing
  from one section have been added. Our processes and tools and personnel have been changing, so this update was a little rockier than before... Next time should be much smoother.

  
  -k-
  

  Posted by: walrath on February 17, 2005 at 09:55 PM

• That's a very Good news.
  Thank u

  Posted by: afei on February 18, 2005 at 02:08 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.