http://udel.edu/~caviness/cisc370-00S-homepage.html

This is the home page for the University of Delaware course CISC 370 - OOP, Java, and the WWW taught by Prof. B. F. Caviness in the Spring of 2000.

In the Beginning ...

• The syllabus gives an overview of the course including the textbooks to be used and a tentative course schedule.

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• Textbooks
  1. Required: C. S. Horstmann & G. Cornell, Core Java 2.0: Vol I - Fundamentals, 4th ed. Prentice-Hall (1999) ISBN 0-13-081933-6.
     

  2. Required: Core Java 2.0: Vol II - Advanced Features, 4th ed. Prentice-Hall (1999)ISBN 0-13-081934-4.
     These two are the main textbooks. A web page for these books.

  3. The former reference: D. Flanagan, Java in a Nutshell, O'Reilly.
     has expanded into three volumes unbeknownst to your instructor until a few days ago. They are
     
     1. D. Flanagan, Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference, 1st ed. O'Reilly, (Sept 1999) ISBN 1-56592-488-6.

     2. D. Flanagan, Java in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition: A Desktop Quick Reference, O'Reilly (Nov 1999) ISBN 1-56592-487-8.

     3. D. Flanagan, J. Farley, W. Crawford & K. Magnusson, Java Enterprise in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference 1st ed., O'Reilly, (Sept 1999) ISBN 1-56592-483-5.
     In the past these have been valuable reference books. I think that the first two are the ones we will use the most (although I still have not seen them. The third one is a reference for some of the more advanced material to be covered near the end of the semester.

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• Lecture notes
  For each class lecture notes will be provided that include the assignment for that class, important announcements (if there are any), solutions to previously assigned exercises, and an outline of the lecture. The outline normally contains a list of all topics to be covered(sometimes with additional details) and example programs to be discussed. These documents will be made available as they are completed. Normally this will be shortly before the lecture.

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• Example programs
  This is a directory of the example programs discussed in lecture.

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• Solutions to homework exercises
  Solutions to many of the daily homework exercises will appear in this directory.

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• Courses grades will be available at a later date online. To view your grades, after getting the CIS370> prompt do
  

  CIS370> mygrades
  

  This should display your grades and an approximation to your current average. If you think that a grade is incorrectly recorded, please check with the TA, Sivaram Burra. An announcement will be made when this feature is available.

       xemacs file-name
      

Emacs is a powerful editor that can be customized to all sorts of behavior. If you have emacs 19.30 or Xemacs 19.11 (or later), then you will already have a Java-mode built in. If you have earlier versions, then you can get the "official" Java-mode from ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/emacs/cc-mode.tar.gz or a simpler version from ftp://ftp.javasoft.com/pub/java/contrib/emacs/.

java-compile.el adds a Compile/Run/Make menu to emacs in java-mode so that you can easily build and run Java applications from within emacs.

hilit-java.el . This uses the hilit-19 package to add syntax coloring to Java source code. It colors keywords, class declarations, standard JDK classes and some constants.

Other Sources of Java and Related Info

For Students

    Java info

• SUN's Java Homepage
• SUN's Java Download Page
  For this course download either the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition(J2SE) or the Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition(J2EE). The latter has some facilities like servlets that I do not believe are in the J2SE, but it requires more space. For more information on the differences between J2SE and J2EE plus clarification about the names Java 1.2, Java 2.0, etc., see the Java 2 Name page.
• SUN's new to Java web page to help newcomers find all they need to get started with Java.
• Well-organized pages of Java links .
• The SUN Java Developer Connection Tech Tips. A good source of technical information about various aspects of Java and the SDK.
• Homepage for James Gosling, the inventor of Java.
• "Java Channel is a collaborative database of reviews about Java resources (articles, tutorials, packages, dev. tools,...). You can use it as a thematic search engine to find valuable resources about a specific topic (EJB, Swing, JIT, ...). Its particularity is to return results organized, commented, and evaluated by Java users, not the raw results from an automatic tool." (copied from the web page.)
• IBM's Java technology zone . IBM probably has more people working on and with Java than any other company in the world.
• Marty Hall's list of Java tutorials - packed full of useful information.
• The Java page of the Open Directory Project. About the Open Directory Project: As the web grows, automated search engines and directories with small editorial staffs will be unable to cope with the volume of sites. The Open Directory Project's goal is to produce the most comprehensive directory of the web, by relying on a vast army of volunteer editors.
• Yahoo's Java page. It contains many links to other Java sites, all nicely organized. An interesting feature is the list of most popular sites.
• Online Magazine
• Java World
• Java Developer's Journal
• Java Oasis , a repository for free Java related software and documentation.
• Jan Newmarch's Java page
• The Java Language Specification, an online version of the official document.
• A proposal from Sun to add generics to Java plus a prototype compiler.
• Programming languages for the Java VM .
• The bookmarks of a grad student in CS. Lots of good information on topics of all kinds including Java, general web info, all kinds of other CS topics as well as links to non-technical material.

    HTML info

• Getting started with HTML , an HTML tutorial including some intro material on style sheets and other advanced HTML.
• An extensive list of HTML tutorials .

For Other Instructors

• BlueJ is an integrated Java environment specifically designed for introductory teaching
• Java Web Start is a Sun product that enable easy down loads of applications (not applets) from a web server. Should be a handy tool for demoing applications in lectures and allowing your students to easily use them.
• JavaHelp(TM) software is a full-featured, platform-independent, extensible help system that enables developers and authors to incorporate online help in applets, components, applications, operating systems, and devices. This software may be a helpful teaching tool.
• A listing,with some evaluation, of HTML validators that will help to find mistakes in your course web pages.
• Clean up your web pages with HTML TIDY .
• Check the links on your web pages to make sure they are still current. Here is some Java code to help you get started.
• A host of advice and tools to help improve your web site. Some of these can be found in other links in this list.
• Info on Adding an Online Search Engine for your course web site.
• A downloadable, client-side, Java applet search engine .
• Another search engine that does not involve using a server.
• Bookmarklets - free tools for power surfing for your students.
• Plug-ins to enhance your student's browsing experience and to extend your content.
  • techexplorer for adding mathematical and other technical content to your web pages.
  • SVG graphics using the Adobe plug-in for displaying them.
    You can use JavaScript to determine whether or not a browser can display SVG images .
• SVG tools
  • The CSIRO SVG Toolkit .
  • Generating SVG images with Java programs .
  • An SVG Slide Tookit .
• Don't like the Unix utility make? Too difficult for your students? Ant is a Java based build tool . In theory it is similar to make but without make's wrinkles. It may be a useful tool for you and your students, especially if they know Java and a little XML.
• JUnit is a Java based testing framework . It may be too complex for most simple class exercises, but the accompanying article, "Incremental Development with Ant and JUnit" can give your students some insights on how important good testing is.

Java in the news

• Know Java? It Could Help Your Salary
• Java is returning to the desktop, 6/12/01.
• Java Skills in Demand 6/27/01

Last updated 6/27/01

This page has been accessed times since 30 Jan 2000.

Copyright 2000 B. F. Caviness