forward compatibility : Java Glossary

2006-02-13 by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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forward compatibility: If new data files can be used by a old version of a program, that is called forward compatibility. Java JVMs are not backward compatible. JDK 1.0 cannot run version 1.5 class files. HTML arranged some forward compatibility by making the rule that HTML viewers much ignore any tags they don’t understand. That way they can still do some rendering of more advanced files. Watch out. Many people are confused by the terms backward compatibility and forward compatibility and use them interchangeably. Backward compatibility is the ordinary kind. Forward compatibility is much trickier to arrange.
backward compatibility
compatibility

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