This book is for professional Java developers who are keen to keep up to date with the new features and functionality offered by the latest version of the J2SE. This is done via discussions and illustrations of the new features, together with practical code examples with plenty of opportunities for experimentation and exploration. This methodology will make the changes and upgrades to the latest version of the Java 2 Platform easily apparent and understandable.

This book was written using the Sun J2SDK 1.4.0b2 release of the J2SE 1.4 platform. While we can't guarantee that the final version will be identical, you can be sure that all the concepts, examples, and explanations will still be valid for the final 1.4.0 release, scheduled for late quarter 4 of 2001.