Students with their own computers can download the Java Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.3 from the Sun website. The URL is http://java.sun.com/products/OV_jdkProduct.html . SDK 1.3 is approximately 157 MB. You might want to get an older version. SDK 1.2.2 will work fine.

The development environment that we use is called Kawa, now owned by Allaire (http://www.allaire.com). It is about 46 MB. You can download it from http://www.journeyed.com/cgi-bin/sgdu0101.exe for $34.98. To find it, click on the dropdown menu for Vendors. On that choose Allaire. On the Allaire vendor site, find Allaire Kawa 5.0 Professonal Student Edition. Follow directions for buying it. In addition, both the development kit and the editor are available in the computer labs, so you will not need your own copies.

When you open Kawa after registering it, you will see the following screen.

Next you must set the path correctly to link Kawa to the JDK compiler and libraries. Click on Customize and then on Options. You should see the following screen. In order to browse through your hard drive to find JDK, click on the two arrows (>>) at the end of the first row. Once you are finished, your screen should look something like the following.

You can also down load Java documentation from the same Sun Company site. This should be unzipped into a separate directory and then stored in a /docs file under jdk1.2.2. A picture of the Windows Explorer page is shown below. This is a good location for the Java Docs. You should be aware that the Java Docs are quite extensive. They take up 85.5 MB on your disk.

When you have the documentation in the correct subdirectory, you can also configure Kawa to use this. Change the last line in the Customize/Options list to point to the documents subdirectory. The Options window is shown below the Windows Explorer picture. Once the document path is set up, you will be able to use the F1 key to access context sensitive help in your programs.

This completes the initial setup for Kawa. You can also configure Kawa to work conveniently with packages. Instructions for doing so are in a separate file.