Organization

The Java Fundamental Classes Reference is divided into two parts. The first part is a brief guide to using many of the features provided by the fundamental classes in Java. This book is not meant to be read from cover to cover, but these chapters can be read in order to learn about some of the basic functionality of the Java API. These tutorial-style chapters provide short examples where appropriate, to illustrate the use of various features. However, this section is by no means a comprehensive tutorial on the fundamental classes.

The second part is the meat of the book. It contains a set of documentation pages typical of what you find in most reference sets. It is organized alphabetically by package, and within each package, alphabetically by class. The reference page for a class tells you everything you need to know about using that class. It provides a detailed description of the class as a whole, followed by a complete description of every variable, constructor, and method defined by the class.

The beginning of each reference page also gives you a synopsis of the class, including information about its availability (i.e., whether the class is available in Java 1.0 or is new in Java 1.1). All new variables, constructors, and methods in Java 1.1 are also clearly marked, so that you can use the reference pages for programming with either Java 1.0.2 or Java 1.1.