Taste of Java with J++ courtesy Microsoft

Microsoft, it seems, is all prepared to active(x) enjoy itself with the sip of the heady brew, Java.
The company recently announced the availability in India of the Microsoft Visual J++ development tool (Professional Edition_, the first Java development tool to create fully Java compatible applets and provide extensibility with Active X technologies.

Includes with Visual J++ is an array of independent Java programming tools and libraries that integrate with and extend Visual  J++ to meet a wide range of development tasks. “Already, based on the equality and productivity of the extremely popular Visual J++ beta program, large numbers of developers are switching to Visual J++ from the other Java development tools,” claimed Sharmilee Ghosh, Microsoft Corporation India’s Internet evangelist.

According to the company, with Visual J++, programmers can create 100 percent Java-compatible multi platform Java code. “Java applications can also be enhanced with components   to create in a variety of other programming languages that support the Active X specification,” said Ghosh.

Visual J++ is the first Java development tool that enables developers to take advantage of the thousands of available Active X Controls and components. This means Java now has support for many new capabilities, including database access, distributed systems, high performance multi-media and integration with existing programming languages.

To provide developers with a wide range of Java capabilities, Microsoft has included a number of products developed by independent software vendors, including:

Aim Tech Corp’s Jamba
Jamba is an exciting Java graphics effects program included with a custom appwizard that runs within the Visual J++ development environment and helps developers create graphical Java objects that can be used with Jamba.

Neural Applications Corp.’s Email Wizard. The custom Java appwizard allows developers to easily crate mail dialogs to include in Java applets and applications.

Object Space’s Java Generic Library
This comprehensive set of reusable data structures and algorithms allows developers to leverage considerable existing code that the basic Java (JDK) classes are missing.
Dimension X’s Liquid Motion. This tool, created with Visual J++, provides a quick way for developers to create 2-D animation in Java, which can then be optimized and extended using Visual J++.
Bulletproff Corp’s J Design Pro. This database application links HTML pages to a server allowing easy sear-ches for information. It will be available via the Internet.
It has been learnt that more than 100,000 copies of the Visual J++ beta have already been downloaded from the Internet.

Availability and pricing
Visual J++ is widely available from Microsoft resellers for approximately Rs. 3,700. The product includes the book “learn  java Now,” which teaches the fundamentals of programming in  java, written by Stephan R. Davis. For further information go to http://microsoft.com/visualj/.