This book offers guidelines for determining when to use Windows-specific APIs and code. It also helps you divide applications into portable Java and platform-specific Java modules both to maximize future code reuse on all platforms and to take advantage of Windows-specific APIs for appropriate applications.


This book provides a worthwhile tour of what's best in new Microsoft Java technologies. The author's intelligent examples will help any developer be more productive with Java used with Windows.

After a how-to on installing the MS Java software development kit (SDK), the author delves right in with an introduction to Application Foundation Classes (AFC) programming. The author then looks at AFC controls, such as trees. Next, he covers a news reader, based on the Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP)--a functional example that he employs to show off different approaches to using Java as an AFC-based applet, as a stand-alone application, and as a JavaBean.

Further chapters turn to using Windows-specific Java. Besides ActiveX controls, there is good coverage of the new Windows Foundation Classes (WFC) available in Visual J++ 6. Java Programming in Windows looks at the architecture and the basics of WFC, including controls and graphics programming. Additional Java technologies presented here include J/Direct (for calling Win32 APIs), JScript (for browser scripting), and DirectX (for game development). This title also introduces XML for programming with data on the Internet. --Richard Dragan