Introduction

About This Release

(This section is taken from the Introduction of the README file.)

Thank you for downloading the JDK 1.1.8 release.

This is version 1.1.8 of the Java Development Kit, also known as JDK 1.1.8 The JDK lets you write applets and applications that conform to the Java 1.1 Core API. It includes improvements in functionality, performance, and quality over JDK 1.0.2, and includes bug fixes since JDK 1.1.

JDK 1.1.8 is a maintenance release. Changes made to the JDK since the first 1.1 beta release are in the file named CHANGES.

Because there are no API changes in maintenance releases, we continue to refer to this platform as the Java 1.1 Platform (rather than 1.1.8 While bugs have been fixed in 1.1.8 the platform hasn't changed.

JDK 1.1 offers new capabilities: Internationalization, signed applets, JAR file format, AWT (window toolkit) enhancements, JavaBeans(tm) component model, networking enhancements, Math package for large numbers, Remote Method Invocation, Reflection, database connectivity, new Java Native Interface, Object Serialization, Inner Classes, and performance enhancements.

For further description of these features, see the "New Feature Summary" in the JDK documentation.

As part of our ongoing effort to improve the quality of the JDK, we will continue to fix bugs and develop new features. In order to help us prioritize our bug-fixing effort, please submit any bugs you find as soon as possible, using the procedure described in the "Reporting Bugs" section below.

The JDK is a product of Sun Microsystems, Inc. JavaSoft is the operating company of Sun that develops the JDK.

Purpose

The JDK allows you to:

Develop applets that will run in browsers supporting Java 1.1, such as HotJava version 1.0, and future versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Develop Java applications.

Version Compatibility

In general, any applet or application that ran in JDK 1.0.2 should run correctly in JDK 1.1. A failure to do so is a bug, except for a small number of cases where compatibility has had to be broken to close potential security holes, or fix implementation or design bugs.

Of course, applets that depend on any new 1.1 APIs will not work on any browsers that support only 1.0.2, such as Internet Explorer 3.0, Netscape 3.0, and the alpha and pre-beta1 versions of the HotJava browser. However, in general, applets relying only on APIs defined in 1.0.2 (but compiled with the JDK 1.1 compiler) will run on 1.0.2 browsers. This "downwards" compatibility has not been extensively tesed and cannot be guaranteed.

For more details, see the document on compatibility at:

   http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/compatibility.html

If you find any such incompatibilities that are not listed on the Compatibility web page, please report them to us as noted below under "Reporting Bugs," and mention that they are compatibility bugs. Compatibility is critically important to us, and a cornerstone of Java's "Write Once Run Anywhere" promise.

What This Documentation Covers

NOTE - The documentation included in this download bundle covers only the new features of version 1.1. It does not attempt to cover the features that have remained unchanged since 1.0. For information about those features, see the documentation available on the JavaSoft website in The Java Tutorial and in the Java Series of books.

The Contents page of this documentation contains links to all of the documentation in this release, plus links to some pages on the JavaSoft website. Note the first few entries are actually located in the java (software) directory rather than in the docs (documentation) directory. If you download just the documentation and not the software, you will not be able to access those java files.

Please read the README file for:

Overview of Java: Introduction; Purpose; Version Compatibility; Bug Fixes; What the JDK Contains; Where to Find More Information; Submitting Comments; Reporting Bugs and Requesting Features; JavaBeans(tm) and the Beans Development Kit
Installing and Running Java: Installation Notes; Windows PATH and CLASSPATH; Windows Installation Troubleshooting; Solaris PATH and CLASSPATH; Solaris Installation Troubleshooting; Running Applets with the AppletViewer; Debugging Programs with the Java Debugger

Most of this documentation package is in HTML. Portable Document Format (PDF) and Postscript (PS) versions of sections of this document are also available from the download page http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1.

For the most part, this JDK documentation is standalone. This means once you've downloaded the JDK docs, you can disconnect from the web, and browse the JDK docs locally. Some ancillary documentation, such as the Java Tutorial, is available by links to the JavaSoft website.