You may have been puzzled by links in the Java glossary to the J: disk drive. This refers to the drive where you store your
Java stuff, i.e. JDK (Java Development Kit),
EE (Enterprise Edition)
and possibly a mirror copy of the mindprod website in
J:\mindprod\. You would map it to the drive
where this stuff really exists, e.g. C: or E:.
Why have a J: Drive?
If you map your J: drive to whatever drive you installed the
JDK, then you can
use the J: links in the Java glossary to rapidly navigate
the documentation on your local hard disk. e.g.
Learning More
or a link like this: J:\mindprod\jgloss\jdk.html into
your local hard disk mirror of the Java glossary kept up-to-date via the Replicator. This way you can browse
the Java Glossary and the Oracle documentation rapidly, even when you are offline.
Browser Support for the J: links
For security
reasons, most browsers deliberately do not supported the J: links, directly. However, you can indirectly use the link with:
- In Opera right click copy link and paste into the command line. Then hit enter. Then it will go. Just clicking once does nothing.
- In Mozilla and Firefox, use Copy Link Location and
paste to the command line.
- In Netscape, use Copy ShortCut and paste to the command line.
- IE (Internet Explorer) directly
supports the J: links. Just click as you would any
other link.
All browsers also directly support the J: links with
a single click, but only if you have downloaded the mindprod website with the
replicator and are clicking a J: link in a downloaded
document. Only IE directly supports the link whether you download the mindprod website or
use it online.
Setting Up Your J: Drive
Lets assume you installed
the JDK on drive
E:. To map your entire E: drive
so you can also access it as J:, first click My Computer ⇒ right click E: properties
⇒ sharing ⇒ share this folder ⇒ ok. Then click My Computer ⇒ right click E: ⇒ open
⇒ tools ⇒ map network drive. Choose J: as
the drive and type in the name
//roedy/E$
as the share name where roedy is your computer’s
name. Infuriatingly, you can’t simply browse to the E:\ directory.
Alternatively you could compose a bat file like this and install it as your
login script:
subst J: E:\
SUBST is quicker and does not fail when other network
connections fail. You can undo the subst, with subst J: /D
While you are at it you can create fake drive shortcuts to directories you use
often, or you can use subst to dynamically assign the
P: and Q: drives on the fly
when you are working with pairs of directories to save you a lot of typing.
The best way to use the J: drive feature is to download
the website using the Replicator and put it in a directory called
\mindprod on your J:
drive or a drive you subst to be your
J: drive.
Similarly you can set up an X: virtual
drive which I map to my F:
drive where I keep all my executables. This website presumes you store your executables on X:.
Here is the batch file I use to set up the associations, which I run automatically on every boot:
