Installing BlueJ (and the JDK) on a PC

Installing the JDK

  1. Access the CD-ROM that came with your textbook by placing it in your PC's CD drive and opening the CD. If you're in Windows 98, double-click on the "My Computer" icon. Then double-click on the icon corresponding to the CD (which will be labelled "JSS4eCD").
  2. Open the JavaSDK folder. There are several interesting documents in this folder, including a README file. You might want to check these out at some point.
  3. Running the application "jdk-1_5_0-beta2-windows-i586.exe" by double-clicking on it. This will pop up a window that says something about "extracting files", etc.
  4. After a while, you will be asked a series of questions. You can accept the default answers, but make sure you note the directory under which you are installing SDK.
  5. After much whirring and clanking from the CD and your hard drive the installation should finish. (You will click on the "Finish" button. At your discretion you can choose, here, to read the associated README file by clicking on the corresponding "check box".)

Installing the BlueJ IDE

  1. Use your web browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer) to access http://www.bluej.org/download/download.html.
  2. Follow the directions to download the latest version of BlueJ. (As of this writing, it is version 2.0.5.) Note the directory in which you save the downloaded .exe file. You may--but probably won't--need this when you get to "step 3" of BlueJ.org's instructions.
  3. To test your installation, go ahead and run BlueJ. Use the Project menu to open one of the sample projects from the Example directory, located in the directory at which you installed BlueJ. Compile the file there, and run it, as we discussed in class.