Hi Melissa,
I believe that my book would be appropriate for classroom use, but I'm biased. Although the chapters are lengthy, I've tried to create a solid organization that flows forward from simpler topics to more advanced topics. Each chapter ends with a collection of programming exercises. Some exercises are fairly advanced, such as creating a BlackJava server with a graphical client frontend.
I cover all of the Java 7 language features (e.g., switch-on-string, try-with-resources, and @SafeVarargs) and several APIs (e.g., JXLayer and Objects). APIs include language-oriented APIs (e.g.,
String, Threading, and Math), Collections, utilities (concurrency and Random), stream I/O, readers/writers, serialization, networking,
JDBC, XML/DOM/StaX/SAX/XPath, and web services.
While discussing language features, I point out the perils of inheritance and compare interfaces to abstract classes. I also briefly refer to such topics as lazy initialization and a few design
patterns.
I had planned to also cover NIO and security. However, I ran out of time when my publisher insisted that I include a chapter on Android. I really didn't want to do this because I don't see Android as having anything to do with Java 7.
Unfortunately, there are a few technical mistakes in the book that made is past my tech reviewers. However, I've created an errata.pdf document that can be freely downloaded from the book page on my website (
http://tutortutor.ca/cgi-bin/makepage.cgi?/books/bj7). For each mistake, this document identifies the page number, points out the error, and provides a correction.
This book contains 12 chapters and 4 appendixes. Because of something called the print-on-demand limit, which prevents the book from exceeding 1000 pages cover to cover, all 4 appendixes could not be included in the book. Appendixes A (Solutions to exercises) and B (Java Scripting) are included in the code archive that can be freely downloaded from the book's Apress page -- the link is available on my website book page. Appendixes C (Odds and Ends) and D (significant applications) can be freely downloaded from my website page for this book (see the previous link).
Perhaps you will want to download all four appendixes and review them before making a decision on whether you want to purchase this book or not.
All the best.
Jeff