Editorial Reviews:
-- Java continues to win adherents in academia and industry: IDC predicts 1 million Java programmers by the year 2000. -- Thoroughly updated to cover Java JDK 2.0 features: Every section and code example has been tested for compliance with new Release 2.0 guidelines. -- New emphasis on fundamental Java programming skills: Greatly expanded core language chapters with ample code examples. -- JavaWorld Authorized Edition: Reviewed by JavaWorld editors and columnists and will be co-marketed by JavaWorld and at major Java conferences. -- New chapters on the Java Foundation Classes and Swing and continuing coverage of AWT.< -- On-line: The book will include a "living" chapter, "The Future of Java", which will be updated quarterly at the IDG and JavaWorld websites. All source code will be available for down-loading from the IDG web site. The book will be cross-promoted by JavaWorld magazine to its more than 200,000 subscribers.
While there are plenty of good introductory texts on the subject, IDG's Java 2 Bible distinguishes itself with an easy-to-understand yet thorough tour of today's Java. Newly revised for the latest standards from Sun, this book can help virtually any reader who has some previous programming experience learn Java efficiently. This book does a good job of maintaining an informal and engaging writing style as it presents Java's essentials. Early on, it introduces key object-oriented design techniques, making Java accessible even if you don't have a background in C/C++ (although it certainly helps). The discussion on the foundation of Java syntax covers basic keywords, variables, data types, and flow control. Both the old and the new in Java are covered, with chapters on the collection classes that are available in both JDK 1.1 and 1.2, and the simpler AWT component library alongside the newer Swing standard. Short code samples are the rule here, with excerpts demonstrating important programming concepts. Readers will appreciate also the nuts-and-bolts explanation of compiling and running Java programs by using Sun's JDK command-line tools. (This title, therefore, will meet the needs of both Windows and Unix users.) Sections on designing interfaces that work on multiple platforms (including Windows and Unix) will help you create more flexible software that runs successfully even on slower Internet connections. The Java 2 Bible offers practical tips for deploying Java applets and applications, including how to use the Java 2 plug-in and JAR files for distributing your finished software. Chock full of examples and never dull, the new Java 2 Bible can help virtually anyone get started with Java. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: - Overview and history of Java
- The Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
- Applets and applications
- Java tools
- Java and C/C++ compared
- Designing with Java objects (abstraction, encapsulation, interfaces, modularity, composition, and polymorphism)
- Object-oriented analysis and design
- Designing cross-platform applications in Java (bandwidth, network, and designing images for fast downloads)
- Source-code conventions in Java
- Tour of Java syntax (keywords, tokens, data types, expressions, operators, control flow, arrays, and strings)
- Java interfaces
- Packages
- Exception handling
- JDK 1.1 and 1.2 collection classes
- Tour of Java stream classes (including console, file I/O, filtered streams, reader, and writers)
- Multithreading
- Networking basics in Java (IP addresses, TCP/IP, sockets, URLs, and RMI basics)
- JDBC for database programming (queries, updates, prepared statements, stored procedures, and transactions)
- UI design and component programming by using AWT and Swing
- Event handling and inner classes
- Java graphics
- Deploying applets and applications (including JAR files and digital signing)
- Installing and running the Sun JDK
Customer Reviews:
Displaying 1 to 5 of 14 total reviews (Page 1 of 3):
 Not enough examples
Major problems:
- Willey (Hungryminds) do not support this book any more. No supplemental web site, no book available on their web, isbn unknown. Author doesn't provide any support (http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/about/resume.html) on his site.
- Book lacks complete runnable examples. I don't care which tools should I use to run (ant, eclipse, websphere, jbuilder - all trials available).
- It is not for beginners, it is not for gurus. I respect the good books for beginners. A good beginner book can make a guru out of a newbie, depends on the author's approach and reader's way of learning. If they match, you have win-win combination.
-Too much introductions in each chapter, e.g. related to LDAP, Novell Directory Services product was introduced in 1994, bla bla bla, it includes many good things, bla bla, it is shame that programers dont benefit of its capabilities, bla bla. - Oh ! Come on, who cares ! Give us the real stuff, give us examples and show us how to improve them, show us advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Give us some skeletons. No sencences starting "In 1998...".
I wish this book was written as some of my favourites. After all, this is not a bad book, but you will need at least 5 other books to learn what you need to know.
So far O'Reilly's Struts book (isbn 0596006519) helped me to integrate struts and ejb. Addison Wesley Pr, Websphere related book helped me out with IDE (032118579X), and several IBM red books helped me to learn what I needed.
Finally best book ever written, with the best examples, attitude, is isbn 0072226846. It is a j2se book. By my opinion this should be a new standard of writing books. Exact, sharp, smart, examples, rules, best practices, etc. If only they could write a j2ee book.
Finally 2 starts go to this book. I never rated any j2ee book with 4 or 5 stars, so 2 should be good.
My big disappointment about many j2ee books is that the best articles and examples and answers to my questions are found on the internet. I am still looking for a j2ee top book.
 Not for beginners.. not for experts either.
This book assumes you know the subject already. The problem is that the book explains things as if the reader is already a Java programmer. How can one read & understand a company's 10Q filing if he didn't know what PE ratio meant? Then it leaves out too many details to be useful to anyone. if (java2bible == java2babble) { doNotBuy(); }
I get annoyed with these "kitchen sink" books that purport to cover everything and in reality *teach* us very little. I never need just *one* book for everything. I'd also like to highlight the fact that J2EE includes RMI (incl. Activation fwk), Corba (IDL, etc..), JNDI, EJB, Servlets (perhaps JSP). These topics are conspicuous by their absence so avoid this for J2EE and get: Java Enterprise in a Nutshell.
I pity any java-junior trying to balance this weighty tome on their knees: it's sheer size is unworkable. The book is a cancerous polyp on the butt of an over published tech-book-market. where are the ejb's??
i would have thought that any "bible" on enterprise java would at least deal with J2EE. instead, from the list of topics covered, we get the usual basic comparison between C/C++ and Java. big deal. nothing new there. then there's more basics on OOAD. again, if i wanted to know about that, then i'd get a book dedicated to that. justin has released another "technical book" on java 2 networking, and it appears that it must be replicated here. not that that book is worth reading either. take a look at the comments over there.what's the point? what about:
JSP's?
Servlets?
CMP vs. BMP (when to use, guidelines, etc, how they work...)
Transaction boundaries? if i'm way off-base here, then feel free to disregard this review ;) but in my opinion, if i wanted a bible on enterprise java, i'd by a book published by Sun.  Worked for me...
Coming from a programmer experienced in other languages, I thought the pace and depth of this book were perfect. It helped me pick up java and after reading it cover-to-cover, I'm now coding java apps for a living.It's not going to be the only book on java technologies I ever read, but it makes a great first book on java technology. More Customer Reviews:
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(14 reviews)