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The Java language elements available from Sun currently fall into these two broad categories:

• Core Language - defined as the essential set of packages and classes that must be available in the VM regardless of the platform. The contents of the set is defined by the version number and the edition.
  
  
• Optional APIs from Sun - a number of useful Application Programming Interfaces are available from Sun such as for audio and video applications, 3D graphics, etc. However, they are not part of the core language so they generally won't be available for all JVM's on all platforms.
  

These elements now involve an enormous range of packages, classes and methods. So access to documentation on them is essential.

Sun provides a large set of documentation on its java.sun.com site and also for downloading. The Resources section provides information from many other independent sources.

We highly recommend that you download and install your own copy of the Java 2 Platform Standard Edition, API Specification for the latest Java version. It is a set of web pages that describe all the elements (packages of classes and the methods) of the core language.

You will frequently refer to this documentation to find out, for example, what exactly a given method does, what methods are available for a given class, etc.

Note that these specification pages indicate whether a class or method appeared in the core language after version 1.1. This is important if you want to write a program, for example, that is consistent with version 1.1. (Many browsers currently in use will only run version 1.1 applets.)

References & Web Resources

• Java 2 Platform Standard Edition
• java.sun.com

Latest update: Oct.10.2004

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