Gavin follows up to Sam: >Sam writes: > I would also be interested to hear from anyone who can comment on: > a) the differences between Java 1.0 and 1.1 >1.1 adds significant new functionality and replaces much of the old API >for doing GUI stuff with a better design. All the old 1.0 code still >runs fine of course. Yes, and the 1.1 event model is far superior in producing readable and more maintainable code than is the 1.0 event model. I would highly recommend using it. One additional piece of the puzzle to investigate is the Swing release (Java Foundation Classes) from Javasoft (currently in Beta, but worth a serious look). Swing fixes a bunch of the problems in the pure vanilla AWT and makes for much better looking GUIs. >> . Symantec's Visual Cafe (the current version) >I've been using IBM's VisualAge for Java lately, so I don't have any >personal experience with the 2.0+ versions of Visual Cafe. We're using Visual Cafe 2.0 and have no complaints. I've not played with VisualAge, so I can't make comparisons. Visual Cafe 2.0 does have the ability to produce native Win32 objects. >While you do end up with a "standalone" .EXE file, the definition of >standalone in these cases may mean multiple megabytes of required >companion .DLL files and .JAR files. True, but then again, most Windows programs today also come with multi-megabyte DLLs such as the Microsoft Foundation Classes, so this isn't much different other than you might get more code sharing with the MFC DLLs.