1. I can''t believe that they actually have a Linux version released more or less concurrently with the Windows and Solaris versions! I''m going to have to wait till I get access to a broadband connection to download the thing, but still...
BTW, what happened to Blackdown?
2. What do you all think about the NIO API? I haven''t decided yet what I think about it but it is encouraging to see some more depth being added to Java networking.
3. The new API that intrigues me the most is the Image I/O API. Stuff that I am currently working on (like building a Huffman class to compress/decompress some images of a custom format), is already (mostly) there. Things like a plugin interface, low-level byte access, etc...
4. Finally getting access to fullscreen in the AWT! Mileage seems likely to vary for the different OS ports out there though. I thought the 1 line tip on how to get a mouse wheel working in Linux (at least in X11) was cool. The custom frame (they call it the "Undecorated Frame") interface seems cool also (I would definitely use it in my games!).
5. Then it seems that Sun has added some cool programmer utilities like a logging API and a new keyword for assertions. Would any of you actually use these? I''m not to sure as I haven''t tried rolling my own logging system and I haven''t bothered at all with assertions (I just test for null references where I need to to get a piece of code to run,...). And what about the Preferences API? The example doesn''t seem like anything new (at first I thought it was using some Reflection API magic where you hand the Preferences object the variable that you want to restore and it finds the appropriate value for you and *poof* you''ve initialized your class like that) though.
6. Regular expressions. Finally.
7. The Collections stuff- I''m basically ho hum about the new classes, etc... I am dissapointed that I didn''t find any tree classes in there.
Wow, Sun''s added a lot of stuff. What''s your opinions?
