Intermediate Java Programming
Week 1
Do a short review of the Java skills you should already have, and find out about a few different development environments you can use to create and run your own Java programs. Then, find out how to create arrays, how to store and access data in them, and how to process them efficiently using loops.
Week 2
Learn how to read and write computer data files using Java. Then, look at exactly what object orientation means to Java through the topic of inheritance. You'll also learn how to use the different types of classes (interfaces, abstract classes, and concrete classes) to your advantage.
Week 3
Learn how to set up a stand-alone application using Java's GUI tools, including labels, buttons, dialogs, and more. You'll explore several ways that Java can organize multiple GUI components in a window, and you'll find out how to split windows into smaller areas called panels, which you can organize in different ways. You'll see how to set up Java's scroll bars in a window or part of a window so that users can scroll up, down, left, and right through the display.
Week 4
Learn how to create menus using Java's menu bar, menu, and menu item components. Then, you'll see how to combine menu options, graphics, check boxes, radio buttons, and text entry fields into a windowed program that can actually perform a useful task.
Week 5
Learn how to make your program gather all the data from the different components in the window, and then put that information together so you'll get an idea of what you can create with Java's GUI capabilities. Then, learn all about Java's collection classes, a group of data structures designed to work with many items at once.
Week 6
You'll find out how to navigate through a list (forward and backward), how to set up a window with multiple display formats, and how to switch between them by clicking tabs that describe the different views. You'll also learn how to create items that Java can compare, even if Java doesn't know the details of what is in the items. Finally, you'll find out how to use maps and a bit more about Java's other features, including Java's wrapper class, which is one more important data features of the Java language that you'll use quite often.
Introduction to Java Programming
Week 1
Get an introduction to computer programming in general and to Java in particular. You'll also complete the downloads and installations you'll need for the rest of the course, as you receive a walk-through of the process of editing, compiling, and running computer programs written in Java. Then, write your own Java program while learning some of the basics of Java syntax (or form), some of its naming conventions, and its basic data types.
Week 2
Learn about Java's primitive data types and how to use them in simple programs which you will need to learn to use before you can move on to more complex types. Then, learn to declare classes, objects, attributes, and methods to Java with rewriting a program in Java's OOP structure.
Week 3
Learn how to declare data variables to Java and how to use variables in arithmetic expressions to calculate new results. Then, look at the decision-making process in detail and see how Java does it and learn how to write Java programs that make decisions based on the principles of computer logic.
Week 4
This week, you'll learn to repeat actions using a control structure called a loop. Also, discover how Java generates exceptions and how you can prevent them from crashing your programs. Then, look class methods and how to call them without creating any objects and find out about a debugger, which lets you look at what's going on inside your program as it runs.
Week 5
Continue to use BlueJ's debugger as you learn Enumeration to set up new data types with built-in limits on their values and Java's switch structure to replace a series of nested if statements with single value-based structure. Then, look at Java's application program interface (API) while you learn to make numbers and other output look the way you want them to in Java.
Week 6
Get an introduction to the world of Java windows and begin to look at GUI programming. Finally, continue exploration of Java 2-D graphics with a look at some simple animation and use the same technique cartoonists have used for a hundred years now: redrawing an image in a slightly different location and repeating that process many times a second so the image appears to move. You'll also learn to create a self-contained object that "knows" its own size, color, shape, location, and how to draw itself into our window.
Introduction to XML
Week 1
Install and personalize one of the greatest bargains in computer programming—Microsoft's free, yet powerful, Visual Studio (VS) Express. You will understand how to using XML in your personal projects or in your career. Then, compare XML and HTML and examine the main similarities and differences between the two languages.
Week 2
Explore the most common programming techniques, including creating variables, setting up loops, and telling the program how to make decisions by branching to alternative sections of code. Then, learn to create style rules about color, position, size, and typeface (font) to make your content look great on a web page.
Week 3
Learn to present raw data attractively and efficiently in browsers using XSL style sheets. You will explore transforming your XML data by sorting its elements alphabetically and then displaying them in a table as a numbered list. Then, learn how to search data in an XML document to locate a particular element, copy the element into a listbox, and then delete it from the XML document.
Week 4
Discover how to use XSLT to transform XML structures and change an XML file into CSV (comma separated values), a format used to store tables like spreadsheets. You will practice other transformations such as adding, deleting, and renaming elements in an XML document. Then, compare an XML file to a schema file that describes the XML's correct structure and the types of data it must contain.
Week 5
Learn to store and display XML graphics. You will work with SVG, an XML format that specializes in creating lines, shapes, color, special text effects, and geometric drawings. Then, focus on namespaces - the XML technique that avoids ambiguity when two element tag names are identical but refer to different things. You will learn how to attach a unique Web page address (a URL) to a set of tags to avoid this name collision problem.
Week 6
Learn how to use two related programs and create practice quizzes for students or anyone facing a test. Finally, explore the two main ways to manage XML data—DOM and SAX. You will discover how to reuse basic code to create any kind of XML data management program.