Learn the elements of good Java code style and why they are important.

Learn how to create a tree model that displays an XML document structure.

Learn what dynamic service discovery is and what it can do for you. Then see how easy it is to integrate this magic into your own project.

Learn how to cleanly and properly manage a parallel task of unknown duration, respond to a variety of outcomes, and keep the user interface responsive and informative.

Learn how to load and process an XML document using only the standard Java API, and then see how to simplify matters with XPath expressions.

Learn how to use the Calendar class to properly compute differences between dates, understand why using "24*60*60*1000" is a really bad idea, and see how ChoiceFormat can be used to display relative date differences in a human-friendly format without effort.

Reduce component coupling by adding a simple one-to-many notification system to your application, and let the recipients decide what to do.

Keeping state in a singleton pattern is nice, but adding threads might lead to unexpected behavior. Explore how this might happen, then see how simply it can be corrected.

The Model-View-Control concept tells you to separate your display components from your business logic. Explore one approach for getting this separation in a simple Swing application.

Get started on the path to taking programmatic control of your files and adding value to OpenOffice.org's no-cost price tag by using XML.

When all else fails, read the logs! See how to take complete control over Ant's logging system by creating some custom Ant logger classes that put the log messages you want into the format you need.

Sometimes, you just need a little bit more out of Ant. Work through the steps needed to give Ant some additional capabilities.

The Apache Ant build tool does many things out of the box, but there may be a time when you need Ant to do something extra. Discover the steps needed to make Ant do those things only you need it to do.