Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work [Paperback]

Steven E. Holzner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0672327473 | ISBN-13: 978-0672327476

Take your Java programming skills beyond the ordinary. Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work will make Java your playground with ten detailed projects that will have you exploring the various fields that Java offers to build exciting new programs. You'll learn to:

• Create graphics interactively on Web servers
• Send images to Web browsers
• Tinker with Java's Swing package to make it do seemingly impossible things
• Search websites and send e-mail from Java programs
• Use multithreading, Ant and more!

Increase your Java arsenal by taking control of Java and explore its possibilities with Java After Hours.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at WorkAbout the Author

Steve Holzner has been writing about Java for as long as Java has been around—nearly two dozen books over many years. He has written a total of 92 books, which have sold more than two million copies in 18 languages. He has also been a contributing editor at PC Magazine and has been on the faculty of MIT and Cornell University. He runs his own training company, Onsite Global, for corporate programmers at http://www.onsiteglobal.com, teaching nearly all current programming topics.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Welcome to Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work, the book that lets you kick back and take control of Java. This book is not to be taken too seriously—it's meant to be fun. So relax; you're in the driver's seat here. This is where you get to make Java do some outrageous things for you.

Why Is This Book Unique?

If you're a programmer, too many of the programming books you've read have probably not been much fun at all. In fact, many of them are grim slogs.

Not this one. This is designed to be the computer book for the rest of us who just want to kick back and get a little enjoyment out of what we do everyday.

That's not to say that the programs you're going to find here aren't powerful and that you can't learn some interesting techniques from them—you can. There's all kinds of cool stuff in here, from creating a multithreaded hockey game to an online chat room, from an Internet-based intercom to a temperature forecaster that draws JPEG images online and sends them to browsers.

There's a lot packed in here, and as the book's author, my hope is that at least some of it will make you take a second look and say, "Cool!"

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for you if you're a Java programmer and you're tired of the usual run-of-the-mill stuff.

This book is also for you if you want to learn some of the techniques involved: sending JPEGs back from a web server, grabbing web pages from Java code, creating drop shadows in Java2D, using online filters, controlling any other program robotically, and more.

About the Book's Code

This book contains 10 projects, along with some minor projects used for illustration purposes (one of these subprojects builds an entire web server you can run from your desktop, given an Internet connection and a fixed IP address, which you probably have if you have a broadband connection).

Here's an overview of the code in this book:

• Chapter 1: Aquarium—A multithreaded fish-swimming project with fish that swim realistically against a bubbly background.

• Chapter 2: Slapshot!—A multithreaded hockey game that moves. You play against the computer and set the speed. And when you set the speed in the upper 90s, you've got a good chance of losing.

• Chapter 3: The Graphicizer—An image-editing and conversion tool. This one lets you read in JPG, PNG, or GIF files and save images in JPG or PNG format. You can work with images pixel by pixel, embossing them, sharpening them, brightening them, blurring them, reducing them, and so on. And you can even undo the most recent change.

• Chapter 4: Painter—Lets you draw your own images from scratch—ellipses, rectangles, lines, and so on. You can even draw freehand with the mouse. You can also draw each shape open or filled, using a texture fill, a solid color fill, or a gradient fill. You can draw text. You can give shapes a drop shadow, or make them transparent. You can draw using thin lines or thick lines. You can set the drawing color. And not only can you save your work when done, you can also read in images and work on them, annotating them with text or adding your own graphics.

• Chapter 5: The Chat project—In this project you create your own private Internet chat room that will keep you in touch with anyone over the Internet. All you need is Internet access and a Java-enabled web server. You can have as many people in your chat room as you like. What they type, you can see, and what you type, they can see. Type all you like—all you're paying for is the local Internet connection.

• Chapter 6: WebLogger—Log access to your website. This project lets you log users who access your website by access time, authentication type, username (if they've logged in), user IP address, the URL they accessed on your site, their browser type, the milliseconds they were there for, and so on. All without their knowledge.

• Chapter 7: The Robot project—Another cool one. This project lets you control any other program by remote control; just tell it what to do. You can send text to the other program you're controlling. You can use the Alt and Ctrl keys. You can send tab characters, the Enter key, or the Esc key. You can also use the mouse—just enter the screen location (in pixels) where you want the mouse to move to. Then click the mouse, right-click it, or double-click it. You can also take screen captures. Want to automate working with any program? The Robot will do it.

• Chapter 8: The Browser project—This project lets you create a fully featured browser (subclassing Microsoft Internet Explorer) in your Java applications.

• Chapter 9: The Intercom project—This project lets two people type across the Internet. You just start up the project, connect with the click of a button, and you've got your own connection: Everything you type into the Intercom, the other use can see, and everything the other user types, you can see. This one is a client/server application and connects directly across the Internet using its own protocol—unlike the Chat project, no Java-enabled web server is needed here at all.

• Chapter 10: The Forecaster project—Displays a four-day temperature forecast for your area, starting with today's high and low temperatures. All you've got to do is to tell the Forecaster your ZIP Code, and it'll give you the forecast by reading its data from the National Weather Service and sending a JPEG image from the server back to the browser.

You can download all the code used throughout this book from the Sams website at http://www.samspublishing.com. Enter this book's ISBN (without the hyphens) in the Search box and click Search. When the book's title is displayed, click the title to go to a page where you can download the code.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book uses various typefaces:

• A special monospace font is used to help you distinguish code-related terms from regular English, for. Here's an example: The actionPerformed method handles menu selections, setting the appropriate drawing flags as needed.

• As I develop the code in this book, the new code being added will appear this way:

import java.awt.*;import java.awt.event.*;public class Intercom1 extends Frame implements Runnable, ActionListener{  public static void main(String args)  {    new Intercom1();  }  .  .  .}

• Each chapter has a real-world scenario, which looks like this:

---

Real-world Scenario - You're going to find real-world experience and insights in real-world scenarios like this one. These track what's going on in the computer industry, in the technology under discussion, or just generally in programmer's lives these days.

---

• Notes, tips, and cautions look like this:

---

Note - Notes provide additional information related to the surrounding topics.

---

---

Tip - Tips provide shortcuts to make a task or better ways to accomplish certain features.

---

---

Caution - Cautions alert you to potential problems, or to common pitfalls you should avoid.

---

And that's all you need. Get ready and turn to Chapter 1, "Making Fish Swim in the Multithreaded Aquarium," to crank things up and make those fish swim.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Sams (June 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672327473
• ISBN-13: 978-0672327476
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #315,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Steven Holzner is an award-winning author who has written extensively on Ajax and JavaScript. With over 100 titles published, he's sold over a million copies of his books and been translated into 16 languages. As a former faculty member of MIT and Cornell, he teaches corporate seminars around the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for learning fun techniques in Java, August 27, 2006

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calvinnme - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work (Paperback)

This book is for experienced Java programmers that don't need a rehash of the basics and want to try some interesting projects as well as learn some new techniques and tricks such as sending JPEGs back from a web server, grabbing web pages from Java code, creating drop shadows in Java2D, using online filters, and controlling any other program robotically.

This book contains 10 projects, along with some minor projects used for illustration purposes. One of these subprojects builds an entire web server you can run from your desktop, given an Internet connection and a fixed IP address, which you probably have if you have a broadband connection. The following is a summary of the book's contents:

Chapter 1: Aquarium-- A multithreaded fish-swimming project with fish that swim realistically against a bubbly background.

Chapter 2: Slapshot -- A multithreaded hockey game that moves. You play against the computer and set the speed. And when you set the speed in the upper 90s, you've got a good chance of losing.

Chapter 3: The Graphicizer-- An image-editing and conversion tool. This one lets you read in JPG, PNG, or GIF files and save images in JPG or PNG format. You can work with images pixel by pixel, embossing them, sharpening them, brightening them, blurring them, reducing them, and so on. And you can even undo the most recent change.

Chapter 4: Painter-- Lets you draw your own images from scratch--ellipses, rectangles, lines, and so on. You can even draw freehand with the mouse. You can also draw each shape open or filled, using a texture fill, a solid color fill, or a gradient fill. You can draw text. You can give shapes a drop shadow, or make them transparent. You can draw using thin lines or thick lines. You can set the drawing color. And not only can you save your work when done, you can also read in images and work on them, annotating them with text or adding your own graphics.

Chapter 5: The Chat project-- In this project you create your own private Internet chat room that will keep you in touch with anyone over the Internet. All you need is Internet access and a Java-enabled web server. You can have as many people in your chat room as you like. What they type, you can see, and what you type, they can see. Type all you like--all you're paying for is the local Internet connection.

Chapter 6: WebLogger-- Log access to your website. This project lets you log users who access your website by access time, authentication type, username (if they've logged in), user IP address, the URL they accessed on your site, their browser type, the milliseconds they were there for, and so on. All without their knowledge.

Chapter 7: The Robot project-- This interesting project lets you control any other program by remote control; just tell it what to do. You can send text to the other program you're controlling. You can use the ALT and CNTL keys. You can send tab characters, the Enter key, or the ESC key. You can also use the mouse--just enter the screen location (in pixels) where you want the mouse to move to. Then click the mouse, right-click it, or double-click it. You can also take screen captures. If you want to automate working with any program, the Robot will do it.

Chapter 8: The Browser project-- This project lets you create a fully featured browser that subclasses Microsoft Internet Explorer in your Java applications.

Chapter 9: The Intercom project-- This project lets two people type across the Internet. You just start up the project, connect with the click of a button, and you've got your own connection: Everything you type into the Intercom, the other use can see, and everything the other user types, you can see. This one is a client/server application and connects directly across the Internet using its own protocol--unlike the Chat project, no Java-enabled web server is needed here at all.

Chapter 10: The Forecaster project-- Displays a four-day temperature forecast for your area, starting with today's high and low temperatures. All you've got to do is to tell the Forecaster your ZIP Code, and it'll give you the forecast by reading its data from the National Weather Service and sending a JPEG image from the server back to the browser.

I'm a Java multimedia programmer, and I found this an interesting collection of projects and ideas for games and utilities I am working on. It is much more interesting than all of those enterprise Java books that are necessary for getting stuff done at work, but are not that inspiring. I recommend this project-based book to anyone curious about just what can be done with Java.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars try learning SWT and Eclipse, July 24, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work (Paperback)

Veteran author Holzner has come forth with a deliberately quirky book. It has an informal choice of Java programming topics, where these are unlikely to be seen in other, more comprehensive and conventional Java texts. Plus, Holzner uses the latest major release, Java 1.5.

To be sure, you really must have some nodding acquaintance with Java. Not necessarily 1.5, mind you. But part of the book's focus is that it does not waste your time going over basic issues like syntax and the core classes.

The book exposes you to more than just the standard Java 1.5 distribution from Sun. You should already know that the latter has two sets of widgets - the original AWT and the newer Swing, where Swing is often considered to be better than AWT. But there is another widget toolkit, called SWT. Freely offered by IBM. It has been well received by many Java programmers as being superior to AWT and Swing. In Chapter 8, on making a custom web browser, for example, Holzner shows the virtues of SWT. Purely in terms of broadening your Java experience, it is worth checking SWT out.

Holzner also puts in a strong plug for Eclipse. An Integrated Development Environment that is free and open source. (It also originated from IBM.) It offers the promise of a very nice, high productivity context in which to code your Java. Its proponents suggest that Eclipse and Java can match any Microsoft IDE for coding VB.NET or C#.

You see, if you treat the book correctly, it's not the topics themselves that are the most important items. Don't get me wrong. They are certainly interesting in their own right. Rather, it's the broadening of your knowledge en route that is the book's main attraction.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun stuff to continue your Java journey..., August 28, 2005

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Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Java After Hours: 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work (Paperback)

In most tech language tutorials and how-to articles, you end up getting sample programs and projects that are "formal" or work-related. But sometimes you learn more about a language if you can work on fun stuff. Steven Holzner moves into that territory in the book Java After Hours. There's some stuff in here I'm going to mess around with...

Contents: Introduction; Making Fish Swim in the Multithreaded Aquarium; Slapshot! The Interactive Hockey Game; The Graphicizer Image-Editing and Conversion Tool; Creating Stunning Graphics with Painter; Chatting on the Internet with the Chat Room; Who's There? Logging Access to your Website with WebLogger; Running Any Program via Remote Control with the Robot; Creating a Custom Web Browser in Java: The Browser Project; Typing Across the Internet: The Intercom Project; Getting a Graphical Weather Forecast: The Forecaster Project; Index

I'll admit that I have to give high marks to any book that mixes Java and my favorite sport... hockey! :)

Seriously, Holzner does some interesting things that make this book stand out. By using projects and examples that are more personal and "fun" in nature, it's much more likely that the reader will become absorbed in the material and pick up the particular concepts almost without trying. He also uses projects that are graphical in nature instead of relying on cold, dry server-based routines that just print some words on the screen. It's one thing to learn about multithreading by trying to create "processes" that can run concurrently. It's a whole different learning experience when the threads are fish in an aquarium, and you can truly watch the threads run and interact. This is something you don't see often in most books today. And when you get done with each chapter, you actually have something visible you can look back at and enjoy.

This isn't a book to get if you are looking to learn Java from the ground up. There's no "from A to Z" progression through the language. But if you've already learned Java and are looking to learn some new techniques and concepts, this is an excellent "next step" to take in your Java journey...