Where to begin

[Ashan Ranasinghe]

Hi, I registered some time back but i've been away a long time and anyway i decided to rethink my learning pattern. so for that end i would like to start from scratch. i have a couple of questions that i would like to ask and would appreciate all the help i can get.

1) how can you manually install J2EE without downloading the application server bundle. the sun site sucks when it comes to explaining how to get other containers working (any links would be helpfull)I already have the J2SE Installed i want support for JSP and Java Beans and servlets. I would like to use Apache and tomcat.

2) whats the best IDE and Editor (IDE - Graphical click and drag interface, Editor - Hand coding with maybee code completion) it also must be light in memmory consumption.

3) Where do i start learning java other than the sun tutorials(I would like the best and easiest(I know its a paradox) that help you get down to the graphical part as soon as posible)

4) What other forums do you rank as your top 5

Thanks a Lot
Ashan

[Layne Lund]

1) I'm not sure. I just installed the whole shebang, although I haven't spent a whole lot of time learning J2EE yet.

2) Personally, I use Netbeans for Java development. Eclipse is very popular, too.

3) You should get a good book, such as Head First Java. You might also try the problems in the Cattle Drive

4) Well...
Java in General (beginner)
GUI programming (Swing, etc.)
I/O and Streams

I think those might be the best for starting. Oh wait...you mean other than at Java Ranch? Now why would you want to go any where else? This is such a friendly place!

Layne
[ January 23, 2006: Message edited by: Layne Lund ]

[Ashan Ranasinghe]

lol thanks for the prompt reply layne. i was going through the other posts and i see that you have answered to nearly all of them. ok scrap that, all of them then. lol. anyway thanks for the reply. but isnt netbeans a little memmory intense. and about eclipse i cant get it to work maybee i'm hairbrained.

and do you know where i can download the J2ee packages only. then i can set a path pointing to them but i cant find a lone distribution of the required files.

[Layne Lund]

Originally posted by Ashan Ranasinghe:
lol thanks for the prompt reply layne. i was going through the other posts and i see that you have answered to nearly all of them. ok scrap that, all of them then. lol. ...

What can I say? I'm a little bored this evening and thought I'd see if I could help some people here at the Ranch. Maybe I should take a look at my own homework...

Layne

[John Dell'Oso]

Ashan,

If you just want support for JSPs and servlets, then the jar files for this support come with Tomcat. The file names are jsp-api.jar and servlet-api.jar and can be found in the common/lib directory of your Tomcat installation.

Regards,
JD
[ January 24, 2006: Message edited by: John Dell'Oso ]