WHAT IS JAVA ????

Based on the enormous amount of press Java is getting and the amount

of excitement it has generated, you may get the impression that Java will 

save the world-or at least solve all the problems of the Internet. Not so. 

Java's hype has run far ahead of its capabilities, and while Java is indeed 

new and interesting, it really is another programming language with which 

you write programs that run on the Internet. In this respect, Java is closer 

to popular programming languages such as C, C++, Visual Basic, or Pascal,

than it is to a page description language such as HTML, 

or a very simple scripting language such as JavaScript.

More specifically, Java is an object-oriented programming language developed 

by Sun Microsystems, a company best known for its high-end UNIX workstations.

Modeled after C++, the Java language was designed to be small, simple, and 

portable across platforms and operating systems, both at the source and at the

binary level, which means that Java programs (applets and applications) can run

on any machine that has the Java virtual machine installed (you'll learn more about this later).

Java is usually mentioned in the context of the World Wide Web, where browsers

such as Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer claim to be "Java enabled." 

Java enabled means that the browser in question can download and play Java programs, 

called applets, on the reader's system. Applets appear in a Web page much the same way 

as images do, but unlike images, applets are dynamic and interactive. Applets can be used 

to create animation, figures, forms that immediately respond to input from the reader, games,

or other interactive effects on the same Web pages among the text and graphics.