Microsoft® SDK for Java 2.0 Preview Release Notes

Welcome!

Index

Release Notes

Introduction

Welcome to this preview version of Microsoft SDK for Java 2.0. This preview version of the SDK includes:

• Microsoft virtual machine for Java. This is the official Win32 Reference Implementation of Java and will ship with Internet Explorer 4.0. Among the new features in this beta are support for most of JDK 1.1, automatic and bi-directional support for ActiveX components and Java Beans, and further internationalization (i18n) support.
• Application Foundation Classes: GUI Libraries, which provide a rich set of AWT-compatible graphics and user interface components to help build commercial-quality applications more quickly.
• Featured class libraries and samples including a Java implementation of Microsoft's CAB packaging and compression technology, JDBC, Direct Animation, and DirectX 3.
• Development tools and utilities: including latest beta version of Java compiler (JVC) with JDK1.1 support, JCOM (new COM support conversion tool), and many others.

Please read the beta license agreement before using the SDK. Send your comments using the public forums //msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.java.sdk for SDK discussions or //msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.java.afc for AFC discussions. Please send bug reports with repro steps following the instruction in the support section of this release note.

Installation Requirements

Platform support:

This SDK requires Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 (except for AFC cross platform files, see below). Please install the latest version of Internet Explorer for development and before you install the SDK on your machine.

AFC: Additional Platforms

AFC is implemented in Java and designed to run on multiple platforms and virtual machines. For further information about additional platforms, see the 'Known Issues' section below. Please note that in this beta release, AFC will run only on virtual machines supporting JDK 1.1, including the Microsoft virtual machine included with the SDK. AFC will work on both JDK 1.0.2 and JDK 1.1-compatible virtual machines by the final release.

In addition, all virtual machines do not function identically, and while AFC currently runs on 1.1 platforms today, it does not yet do so reliably (for example, Virtual Machine (VM) behavior varies between Javasoft's JDK 1.1 on Win32 and Javasoft's JDK 1.1 on Solaris). Please report any problems you encounter when testing AFC on additional platforms using the on-line bug reporting mechanism on http://www.microsoft.com/java/sdk.

Installation Instructions

SDK Installation

The steps to install the SDK are the following:

1. Please make sure the target machine you are using satisfies the platform requirements for Internet Explorer and has the latest Internet Explorer installed
2. Install the SDK by double-clicking on the file sdk-java.exe. You can choose to install the latest Microsoft VM for Java as part of the SDK installation. You will be prompted for this at the tail end of the SDK installation.

Windows 95 users will have to install the DCOM update by double-clicking on dcom95.exe in the BIN directory.

If you choose not to install the latest Microsoft VM for Java, you can do so later by double-clicking on msjavavm.exe in the BIN directory.

Runtime of featured class libraries need to be installed before running any samples for those packages. The runtime will be provided in the JavaOne CD uncompressed directory and also be posted on the SDK2.0 preview web page for individual download per user's choice.

This SDK includes a developer version (with debugging information) of the classes.zip file. You may install it by running classd.exe in the SDK \Bin directory.

AFC Installation on Additional Platforms

If you are using AFC on platforms other than Internet Explorer or the Microsoft virtual machine and do not wish to install the entire SDK, the AFC_ONLY directory contains everything you need to install and run AFC. However, if you are installing the entire SDK you can ignore this section as AFC will automatically be installed on your machine as part of the SDK installation process.

The AFC_ONLY directory contains:

• AFC.ZIP (AFC UI and Fx classes)
• AFCSAMP.ZIP (UI and Fx samples)
• AFC API reference documentation

To install AFC:

1. Copy AFC.ZIP to an appropriate location on your computer (such as $HOME/classes).
2. Next, add this location to your CLASSPATH - for example: set CLASSPATH = $HOME/classes/afc.zip:$CLASSPATH (on Unix machines).

Please note that in this release, AFC.ZIP should be used only on VMs that are JDK 1.1 compliant.

AFCSAMP.ZIP contains some AFC samples that you might find useful. Please unzip into a location that is convenient (such as $HOME/src/java/AFC).

Redistribution Components

No component of the preview SDK is redistributable. The final release of the SDK will include a freely redistributable version of the Microsoft virtual machine on Win32. The license accompanying the final SDK release needs to be accepted to get the right to redistribute parts of the SDK.

Contents of SDK

The SDK beta includes both software and documentation.

Microsoft Win32(r) virtual machine for Java

The latest release of msvmjava.exe supports the following:

Enhanced JIT performance and reduced working set requirements

Enhanced interpreter loop performance

Initial JDK1.1 Support

The Microsoft virtual machine now supports serialization and reflection as defined by JDK1.1.

Java and COM

SafeArray.class now has public methods to access array data.

COM custom marshalling provides better control of how data is passed in and out of the virtual machine

ActiveX and Java Beans support

Any Bean is exposed as an ActiveX control and any ActiveX controls is exposed as a Bean.

Auto-IDispatch now uses introspection to expose the necessary public classes and variables.

ITypeInfo is provided on a class automatically and a type library can be persisted for a class.

Event sourcing and sinking is supported.

Security Model

As with previous versions of the Microsoft virtual machine, this version supports digital signing and the option to execute signed code as trusted. In our next beta release, we will be premiering Microsoft's capabilities-based Authenticode 2 security model for finer grained access to system resources like the file system or subnet addresses.

Please make sure that you update your system with the latest Microsoft virtual machine, by double clicking on "msjavavm.exe" in the BIN directory, if you did not update this when installing the SDK for Java 2.0

To get more information on working with the Microsoft virtual machine, please check out the SDK documentation on this subject.

Known Issues for the Microsoft Virtual Machine

This release of the VM strictly enforces the following requirement: for a class to access methods of a second class in another package, the second class must be declared public. Previous releases did not enforce this requirement. Hence some applets that worked before may display errors with the new virtual machine. It is advisable to make the packages conform to this Java requirement.

• For ActiveX-Beans integration, certain functionality (such as persistence and OC96 windowless support) is not yet present. The ActiveX control hosting does not support all ambient properties. Code download will be provided in future betas. The AXExplorer class requires Internet Explorer 3 or 4 and the AXPlugin class requires the "plugin.ocx" bundled with either of these browsers.
• On Windows NT 4.0, the virtual machine install is currently only supported on the default drive. This will be corrected in the next release.
• Uninstall of the virtual machine is not currently supported. This will be corrected in the next release.
• Raw Native Interface Enhancements: The Raw Native Interface (or RNI) has been extended as a result of feedback and performance enhancements. The enhancements made to RNI are in four primary areas:
  • Additional API's to enable reflection from native code
  • Changes to support future garbage collection performance enhancements
  • RNIGetCompatibleVersion requirement for RNI DLLs
  • RNI invocation APIs

  For more detailed description of the new and updated API's, see the SDK documentation.

Class libraries

The SDK provides a rich set of class libraries.

We have included:

• Most new JDK 1.1 classes - the rest, such as java.net.* enhancements, will be integrated or added in subsequent Betas.
• AWT: We have completely reimplemented AWT for Win32. During this process we have removed AWT's dependency on MFC, and worked to eliminate overhead, bugs, performance problems and rectified unusual design decisions. ActiveX controls can also now be hosted as Beans.
• Application Foundation Classes (AFC) contains
  • UI: a rich suite of UI controls, written in Java. UI controls will run across virtual machines and across platforms.
  • Fx: suite of classes for graphics and effects, written in Java. Fx classes will run across virtual machines and across platforms.
  • Active Accessibility for Java: a compact suite of standard interfaces which give Java developers access to accessibility aids for the disabled (exposed through the five base UI classes and the IUIAccessible interface).
• CAB (Java package): We have provided Java APIs for creating and extracting CABinet files on any virtual machine. Please refer to the SDK document for the API specification.
• JDBC: a set of classes that allows access to any ODBC data source. See the JDBC release notes for more information.
• DirectX 3 for Java contains Java classes for the following DirectX multimedia APIs:
  • DirectDraw(r) - provides 2-D graphics services and bitmap composition.
  • Direct3D(tm) Retained Mode and Immediate Mode - high and low-level 3D graphics APIs, providing comprehensive 3-D graphics services.
  • DirectSound(r) - provides sound-mixing and playback services.
  • DirectPlay(r) - provides multiplayer game connectivity over the Internet.
  • DirectInput(tm) - provides services for joysticks and other input devices.

  Please see DirectX3 release notes for known issues and further information.

• Direct Animation: Direct Animation is a new Java API that enables different types of multimedia content to be tightly integrated and deployed, associating the media pieces with a timeline and user events. See the Direct Animation release notes for further information.
• Java internationalization support: Unlike most virtual machines, Unicode support was implemented correctly in previous releases of the Microsoft SDK. Hence getLocalizedInput/OutputStream calls are still valid. All UI methods and paths are Unicode enabled. Due to size of the JDK1.1 Unicode code pages (over 4 megabytes), only the Windows local code pages data(classes) have been included for this beta release.
• Resource format: AFC includes a set of resource decoder classes, allowing users to load Win32 resources in the same way that images and/or sound files are packaged with apps and applets today. These resources are used to:
  • Leverage existing Win32 resources in Java in a cross platform manner
  • Allow easy, safe business application localization
  • Offer a compact, fast way to pass information across the web.
  • Support complements our support for JDK 1.1 resource bundles.
• Multilingual Input Method APIs: Java IME support has been provided for preview only. APIs and sample code have been included in the SDK to allow developers to
  • Create level 3 pure Java IMEs with self defined UI
  • Enable Java applet or application to access any system IMEs as stand alone input method on any systems which shares common IMM (i.e. using Japanese IME on Chinese Windows with Java application)

Application Foundation Classes (AFC)

Microsoft's Application Foundation Classes (AFC) are a comprehensive set of Java class libraries providing user interface controls and graphics and effects classes. AFC's UI controls give Java developers a rich set of UI elements from which they can quickly build compelling, flexible and powerful user interfaces for their applications, enhanced by the innovative graphics techniques exposed for the first time by the Fx graphics and effects classes.

Written in Java, AFC ensures that applications built using these classes can be written once to run on any of the popular platforms and browsers that support Java. The AFC UI controls are defaulted to the Windows UI, but are fully customizable to reflect the needs of application and applet designers. AFC supports Active Accessibility for Java, so any application developed using AFC is automatically accessibility-enabled. AFC comprises:

• UI: a rich suite of UI controls, written in Java. UI controls will run across virtual machines and across platforms, and are automatically accessibility-enabled.
• Fx: suite of classes for graphics and effects, written in Java. Fx classes will run across virtual machines and across platforms

Known Issues for AFC

• Performance: This release does not contain major performance and optimization work for AFC or our AWT implementation. Performance in these areas is therefore a long way from the levels that you can expect to see in the final release. In particular, performance will drop when dealing with large numbers of items in a list. It should also be noted that currently AFC's UI controls are heavily component based. This means that additional performance overhead affects controls containing large numbers of components.
• Platforms: For this release, AFC's UI and Fx classes will only run on virtual machines that support JDK 1.1. However, AFC is designed to run on multiple platforms and virtual machines. Please note: all virtual machines do not function identically, and while AFC currently runs on JDK 1.1-compatible platforms, we have not tested it on all virtual machines. Any problems you encounter when testing AFC on additional platforms are bugs that we will resolve as part of our testing process, and should be reported as bugs for us to address. If you are using AFC on platforms other than Internet Explorer or the Microsoft virtual machine, please see the Installation Requirements section above for installation details.
• JDK 1.1 and 1.0.2 compatibility: This beta will only work with JDK 1.1; we will support JDK 1.0.2 in subsequent betas.
• Painting: AFC has some painting problems under JDK 1.1 on Solaris. It does not exhibit the same problems on JDK 1.1 under Win32.
• Popups: Under JDK 1.1 on Win32 popups work; on JDK 1.1 on Solaris they do not.
• Mouse Tracking: There are problems with mouse tracking on JDK 1.1. We will have a workaround for subsequent betas.
• AFC Beans support: Currently not all components support Listeners (JDK 1.1). All components will be properly bean-ified in future betas.
• Panels/Components: Some components are currently implemented as Panels. They will be restored to being Components in later betas.
• Missing controls and classes: Some controls and classes (for example, ToolTips, Spinners) are not yet implemented and will appear in later betas.
• Fx Classes: FxTextures do not work properly on non-Microsoft virtual machines: this is currently being resolved. UIEdit and FxFormattedText classes do not allow partial text selection, and some image filters have not yet been implemented. These will be corrected for future betas.
• Printing: Not yet enabled
• Sample - BandBox: May throw an exception when performing drag and drop operations.

Development Tools and Utilities

Here is the list of the tools and utilities that are provided in this SDK. For details, please check out the SDK documentation under the title Tools.

JVC.exe:Latest beta version of Java compiler with full JDK 1.1 support including:

• Inner Classes
• Anonymous Classes
• Instance Initializers
• Anonymous Array Expressions
• Class Literals
• Blank Finals and Final Locals
• The @deprecated Tag
• Uncompressed JAR File Support
• Support @COM syntax for JCOM users

For detailed release information, please refer to the JVC release note and SDK documentation.

JCOM:A new powerful COM support tool which should be used in conjunction with the latest JVC provided in this SDK only. For detailed information, please refer to the documentation under tools, JCOM.

QVUE: QVUE can be used for generating a class file summary for any class file, not just those created by JCOM. It prints out class method signatures, and identify .class files that were generated from a type library. The qvue tool is similar to the /U switch on JavaTLB (which printed out class file summaries.) It supports one switch (/s) (print short summary only). This tool is convenient for selecting the correct classfile to use when the classfiles are generated from a type library using JCOM.

JView.exe:Java Application Viewer

AppletViewer.exe: Java applet viewer with internationalization enabled

Jexegen.exe: A tool to convert stand alone Java application into native executable binaries

Msjavah.exe: Updated Microsoft version of C header file generator, check documentation for usage

Regbean.exe: A tool to register a Java Beans control and create a type library for tools such as Visual Basic.

Native.h: Header file for writing raw native code interface

Nativecom.h: This header exposes public COM APIs exposed by the VM

Cabarc: Updated compression tool, which will help developers make compressed self extracting Java programs for download

Known Issues for Tools

Note for VJ++ users: Please be aware that the SDK contains the latest beta version of JVC for use with JDK1.1 development. Javatlb has been removed, so user can use JCOM+JVC to produce the same output. If you are doing commercial Java development and are not dependent on any of the new JDK 1.1 features, you should use the retail version of JVC that came with the VJ++.

Sample Code

There two types of sample code being provided in this release. One is the sample code under \ClassLib\Samples, which may require a runtime, and the other is the sample code under \MsVmJava\Samples that demonstrate VM's enhanced functionality.

Bug Report and Developer Support

Please use the on-line bug report provided on our http://www.microsoft.com/java/sdk page. Microsoft will screen the bugs on a regular basis, and will be working on bug fixes. The bug fixes or work-around will be posted on the Web as soon as possible; news group may also be notified (see the public forums //msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.java.sdk for SDK discussions or //msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.java.afc for AFC discussions).