This book, Learning Java, is actually the third edition—reworked and retitled—of O'Reilly's popular Exploring Java. We've de-emphasized web-page applets this time around, reflecting their diminishing role over the past couple of years in creating "smart" web pages. Other technologies have filled in the gap: JavaScript on the client side, and Java servlets and Active Server Pages on the server side. We cover the most interesting features of Sun's newest release of Java, officially called Java 2 SDK Version 1.3. (In the old days, it would have been called "JDK," for "Java development kit;" we use the newer, officially blessed "SDK," for "software development kit," throughout this book.) These features include servlets, the Java Media Framework ( JMF), timers, the collections, 2D graphics, and image-processing APIs, using the Java security manager, and using Java 2 signed applets. Another important change, though not as recent as SDK 1.3, is the ascendancy of Java Swing as the main API for graphical user interface programming. Much of the material relating to AWT, Java's original GUI programming interface, has been recast and updated to use Swing facilities.
