Java Reference
In-Depth Information
is perfectly adequate for learning but you may want to upgrade to the paid version when you have
reached the end of the topic.
• Notepad++ is a free source code editor running in the Microsoft Windows environment that you
can download from
http://notepad-plus-plus.org
.
It supports syntax highlighting for Java. It is also
handy as a simple editor for XML files.
• I recommend the NetBeans IDE that you can download from
http://netbeans.org
, which is also
free. This is a sophisticated professional interactive development environment that supports not
only Java, but also many other programming languages. Nonetheless, it is easy to use and there
is extensive online documentation. If you have plans to progress into programming using other
languages, there's a good chance that you will find the NetBeans IDE supports them.
Whichever code editor you choose to use, I recommend that you only use the simplest project creation
options. In particular you should avoid using any of the program project types that provide prebuilt skeleton
program code while you are working your way through this topic. By coding everything yourself you will
maximizes your learning experience. Of course, after you have assimilated everything in the topic, you are
ready to enhance your Java program development capability with the full capabilities of a pro development
tool.
A good place to start looking if you want to investigate what other editors are available is the
www.download.com
website.
Installing the JDK
Detailed instructions on how to install the JDK for your particular operating system are available from the
JDK download website at
www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
, so I won't go
into all the variations for different systems here. However, you should watch out for a few things that may
not leap out from the pages of the installation documentation.
First of all, the JDK and the documentation are separate, and you install them separately. If you are
pushed for disk space, you don't have to install the documentation because you can access it online. The
current location for the online documentation for the JDK is
http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api
but this
could conceivably change. The documentation download for the JDK consists of a ZIP archive containing
a large number of HTML files structured in a hierarchy. You should install the JDK before you unzip the
documentation archive. If you install the JDK to drive C: under Windows, the directory structure shown in
Figure 1-1
is created.
