Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours

By Rogers Cadenhead

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Reader Services
  • Introduction
  • Hour 1. Becoming a Programmer
  • Hour 2. Writing Your First Program
  • Hour 3. Vacationing in Java
  • Hour 4. Understanding How Java Programs Work
  • Part II: Learning the Basics of Programming
  • Hour 5. Storing and Changing Information in a Program
  • Hour 6. Using Strings to Communicate
  • Hour 7. Using Conditional Tests to Make Decisions
  • Hour 8. Repeating an Action with Loops
  • Part III: Working with Information in New Ways
  • Hour 9. Storing Information with Arrays
  • Hour 10. Creating Your First Object
  • Hour 11. Describing What Your Object Is Like
  • Hour 12. Making the Most of Existing Objects
  • Part IV: Programming a Graphical User Interface
  • Hour 13. Building a Simple User Interface
  • Hour 14. Laying Out a User Interface
  • Hour 15. Responding to User Input
  • Hour 16. Building a Complex User Interface
  • Part V: Creating Multimedia Programs
  • Hour 17. Creating Interactive Web Programs
  • Hour 18. Handling Errors in a Program
  • Hour 19. Creating a Threaded Program
  • Hour 20. Reading and Writing Files
  • Part VI: Creating Multimedia Programs
  • Hour 21. Using Fonts and Color
  • Hour 22. Playing Sound Files
    • Retrieving and Using Sounds
    • Java Archives
    • Workshop: Making Your Computer Talk to You
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Activities
  • Hour 23. Working with Graphics
  • Hour 24. Creating Animation
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Tackling New Features of Java 2 Version 1.4
  • Appendix B. Using the Java 2 Software Development Kit
  • Appendix C. Programming with the Java 2 Software Development Kit
  • Appendix D. Using Sun ONE Studio
  • Appendix E. Where to Go from Here: Java Resources
  • Appendix F. This Book's Web Site

Hour 22. Playing Sound Files

If you're a science fiction fan, the concept of talking computers should be one that is familiar to you. For years, television shows such as Star Trek have featured computers with the gift of gab. These machines could talk, listen, and comprehend the quirks of spoken language better than many professional baseball players.

After watching the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as a teenager, I was deeply disappointed when my brand new Commodore 64 computer resisted all efforts to learn the English language. (On the plus side, it never tried to kill me, so there are some benefits to owning a less capable system.)

Today, sound is becoming more sophisticated in computer software, which brings us closer to the day when computers talk to us as comfortably as the HAL 9000 spoke to the astronauts in 2001. Java offers the capability to play audio files in numerous formats, and you'll get a chance to make your machine sound off as you learn the following topics during this hour:

• The sound capabilities of the JApplet class
• Sound file formats that you can use
• Loading a sound into an AudioClip for playback
• Starting and stopping playback of sounds
• Creating a looping sound
• Mixing different sounds together
• Packaging an applet's files into a Java archive

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