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handling. This concise, essentials-only approach is in line with the Practical Guide series<br />
overall philosophy. The <strong>book</strong> is based on J2SE 1.4, but anyone using version 1.2 or 1.3<br />
should have no difficulties since any 1.4 or 1.3 features have been explicitly highlighted in<br />
the text.<br />
Chapter 1 dives straight in with a simple example of a Java program. This is to give you an<br />
early feel for the language and show where we are heading. Chapters 2 and 3 cover much of<br />
the basic syntax of Java, including sequencing, branching, and looping, but leaves<br />
discussion of object-oriented topics for later. Those of you with a background in C or C++<br />
will be able to get quickly through these chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 cover the objectoriented<br />
features of the language. Chapters 6 and 7 cover the core features of exception<br />
handling and input/output. To this point, the chapters should be read in order. The last three<br />
chapters may be regarded as optional by some instructors. Chapter 8 covers the Swing<br />
graphical user interface, which is the one application area covered in the <strong>book</strong>. Developing<br />
GUIs is more fun, and readers coming from an environment such as C will appreciate what<br />
is included for free with Java. Chapter 9 discusses collections. Finally, Chapter 10 covers<br />
the more advanced topic of threads. This chapter uses applets for some of its examples, so<br />
you should familiarize yourselves with the applet material in Chapter 8 before attempting<br />
threads.<br />
Source code, exercises, and related material can be found at the <strong>book</strong>'s accompanying Web<br />
site, www.mkp.com/practical/java.<br />
Acknowledgments<br />
First I would like to thank the technical editor of the Practical Guide series, Dr. Jeff<br />
Donahoo of Baylor University, for his advice and numerous suggestions at all stages of the<br />
<strong>book</strong>'s development. This is really appreciated. I would like to thank the reviewers. These<br />
include Carl Burnham; John Raley, Moonlight Systems; Lynn R. Ziegler, Saint John's<br />
University; An Lam, 3PARdata and U.C. Santa Cruz; Bill Jackson, Ensemble Studios; Dr.<br />
Lawrence (Pete) Petersen, Texas A&M University; Jonathan L. Brisbin; Christopher<br />
Marshall, JP Morgan; William Cox, Cox Consulting; Simon P. Chappell; Ryan Witcher,<br />
Modulant Solutions. All the reviewers provided considerable feedback and this has<br />
influenced the final version of the <strong>book</strong>. I would also like to thank the staff at Morgan<br />
Kaufmann, especially Karyn Johnson for her professionalism and, for giving me the<br />
opportunity to publish the <strong>book</strong>, Edward Wade, Cheri Palmer, and the rest of the<br />
production team.