#

Version 1.0 alpha2

# Changes Since the Last Release

The current (alpha2) release of HotJava fixes many bugs and adds many features. This page lists the ones that you might notice. First, it lists the changes that HotJava users might notice. Then it lists the changes that only programmers would notice.

## Changes Visible to HotJava Users

This release adds many features to HotJava. HotJava can display a greater variety of documents than before, due to improved protocol support, support for many Netscape extensions to HTML, and the elimination of many formatting and behavior bugs. The new Goto menu and History dialog make revisiting URLs easier. Other major changes to HotJava include support for printing and better security.

Details of the alpha2 changes to HotJava are listed below. For information on how to use the menu options and dialogs, refer to the HotJava User's Guide.

- HotJava now supports the news: and mailto: protocols, and support for the ftp: protocol has been improved (you can now browse ftp directories).
- HotJava now supports HTTP authentication.
- The Print command (in the File menu) is now implemented.
- A new dialog lets you override certain permission errors.
- Links are now displayed in two colors -- dark blue for links to URLs that you've visited since starting up HotJava this time, and brighter blue for unvisited URLs.
- The new Goto menu lets you easily visit a small set of URLs.
- A new History dialog, accessible from the Navigate menu, shows (and lets you revisit) every URL that you've visited since starting up HotJava.
- You can tear off menus, so that they stay on-screen.
- Document searches now ignore the following words (reducing the size of HotJava's document index and improving the likelihood of searches returning meaningful results): a, an, and, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, from, have, he, in, it, not, of, on, or, she, that, the, there, to, we, which, with, you.
- Images are now scaled, if necessary, so that they fit entirely in the boundaries described by the WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes of the IMG tag.
- HotJava supports more Netscape extensions to HTML. Specifically:
  - the PROMPT attribute of ISINDEX
  - the SIZE, WIDTH, ALIGN, and NOSHADE attributes of HR
  - some new values (TEXTTOP, ABSMIDDLE, BASELINE, ABSBOTTOM) for the ALIGN attribute of IMG
  - the BORDER attribute of IMG
  - centering (<CENTER> and </CENTER>)
  - the escape sequences for ® (&reg;) and © (&copy;)
- HotJava's layout has changed in the following ways:
  - The document title is now in the titlebar (not below it).
  - We've removed the rotating advertising display (which was in the upper right corner of the HotJava window).
  - We've reorganized the Properties and Search windows.
  - Menus now have separator lines (for clarity).
  - HotJava has a new icon (featuring our mascot, Duke).
- A Hangman demo has been added.
- The documentation has been updated to reflect the changes made in alpha2, and the following new documents have been added:
  - HotJava Applet Compatibility
  - Security

## Changes Visible to Programmers

The most noticeable change is probably that the name of the language has changed from "O.A.K." to "Java". Other changes are improved layout capabilities, the implementation of finalization, changes to the way applets can display, and the addition of many security features. Despite these changes, alpha1 applets run under alpha2 with no recompilation. See HotJava Applet Compatibility for information on changes expected in the future.

Details of the alpha2 changes are listed below. For more details on the API, refer to The Java Class API. For information on the compiler and interpreter, refer to the man pages.

- As a result of the language name changing from "O.A.K." to "Java", the following changes have occurred:
  - The compiler name has changed to javac (from oakc).
  - The interpreter name has changed to java (from oaki).
  - The source file extension has changed to .java (from .oak).
- We've fixed many minor Java compiler and interpreter bugs.
- Applets can now perform incremental updates of the display, using Applet's update() method.
- Applet images now have a new data/view scheme, using the classes Observable and Observer.
- We've added the following classes and interfaces:
  In awt package:
    Column, ColumnLayout, DIWUpdateRequest, Dialog, DialogHandler, FontSpec, GenericGraphics, MessageDialog, PSGraphics, Row, RowLayout, Space, StringDialog
  In java.io:
    AccessErrorHandler, InputStreamStringBuffer, PipedInputStream, PipedOutputStream, StreamTokenizer
  In java.lang:
    IllegalAccessException, Ref, ThreadDeath, UnloadableClassException
  In net:
    InetAddress, ProtocolException, Socket
  In net.www.http:
    AuthenticationInfo, UnauthorizedHttpRequestException
  In hotjava:
    Alignable, DocumentManager, DocumentRef, HistoryVector, ImageCache, ImageHandle, Observable, Observer, ObserverList, URLHistory, WRFormatter