Tutorial & Ebook Download

Java is an innovative programming language that has become the language of choice for programs that need to run-on a variety of different computer systems. First of all Java enables you to write small programs called applets. These are programs that you can embed in Internet web pages to provide some intelligence. Being able to embed executable code in a web page introduces a vast range of exciting possibilities. Instead of being a passive presentation of text and graphics, a web page can be interactive in any way that you want. You can include animations, games, interactive transaction processing – the possibilities are almost unlimited.

Some of the programs on this website have been written in Java, so you will need to install the Java runtime environment in order to run them.
You can download the SDK from Sun for a variety of hardware platforms and operating systems, either directly from the Sun Java web site at http://java.sun.com (for Windows, Solaris, and Linux operating systems), or from sites that you can link to from there. The SDK we are going to use is available from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4. For instance a version of the SDK for Mac OS is available from http://devworld.apple.com/java/.

Step One - Creating a project

Create a new project, called “AppletDemo”, as explained in the previous lesson. Remember the name of the directory where you create your project - we’ll need this information.

* From the ‘File’ menu, select the ‘New Project’ menu option. Enter a filename, a title, and your name into the Project Wizard dialog box. Click ‘Finish’.
* Next, from the “File” menu, select “Project Properties”, and modify the output path to our project directory.

eg - If your project name was “c:\JBuilder\myprojects\week2\week2.jpr”, your project directory is “c:\JBuilder\myprojects\week2\
Step Two - Creating a source file

An applet is a class that is executed under the control of a world-wide-web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. We’ll create a new class, called AppletDemo, that runs as an applet.

* From the ‘File’ menu, select the ‘New’ menu item.
* Select the ‘Class’ option, and click OK.
After clicking OK, the “New Object” dialog box will appear. This allows you to customize the class details. Enter ‘AppletDemo’ in the name field, and ‘java.applet.Applet’ in the extends field. This tells JBuilder that our new class will inherit all the properties of an applet. By default, JBuilder will also put your new classes in the current package - but for the purpose of this tutorial, remove the package declaration. Leave the other fields as they are for now, and click OK.
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