Like others have said, the experience varies from book to book, and depends entirely on how much care the publisher puts into converting the original text into a proper e-book. I would definitely recommend using a Kindle app over an e-ink Kindle if you have the option.

"Introduction to Java Programming" by Y. Daniel Liang is an example of a top-notch conversion, and quite a good textbook as well, in my opinion.

Yeah, he seems like a pretty entertaining dude. I haven't had the time to look at but a tiny fraction of his Youtube output thus far.

In any case, he's chosen his scope, and whether you like that scope or not, he's doing a far better job of explaining these fundamental aspects of game design than most Youtube tutorial makers. I'm just letting people know that this exists, because I personally am finding it to be a helpful introduction. And that's all he's designed these videos to be. Criticizing them because he's not using the external libraries of your choosing is totally counterproductive, especially if you're interested in nurturing the Java game design community. Beginners can learn external libraries whenever they want. Understanding fundamental design is a good way to start the larger process.

Well, it's meant to be viewed by people who are at sort of the ground-level with game design, and even with Java itself. I think we can all agree that trying to begin by teaching people an external library may not be the best way to fulfill that end, since you kind of want to teach people about the things going on "under the hood" which may get glossed over by certain handy features of libGDX or whatever else. Once you understand what's happening, of course you want to work with libraries that make your life easier. But if you don't even know how to form a game loop, or how to set up buffers to render pixels to a canvas, and stuff like that, it's best to get a detailed overview of it first.

I don't think he's saying "Java 2D is the best thing to use for making a game." That's not the point. He's teaching fundamentals. In fact, he even says that he'll try to get around, at a later date, to making a series of videos about working with OpenGL and the like. It's just not within the scope of what he's trying to do here.

I found these great tutorials on Youtube a couple days ago. They're about game design using Java. The goal is to keep them relatively bite-sized, and to teach in pure Java (so no external libraries) from a beginner's perspective. I think they could be difficult to pick up for somebody with absolutely zero Java experience, but the guy does a far, far better job of explaining what he's actually doing than pretty much any other coding tutorial I've ever seen on Youtube. He takes it bit-by-bit with each video, and is up to 60-something episodes now, the first one from months ago, and the latest one posted a couple days ago (so this guy is clearly committed to what he's doing).

Anyway, not sure if they've been mentioned yet. Just wanted to share them, since as somebody with a solid knowledge of the Java basics but really no clue about game design strategies, they seem really fantastic so far.

As for the Chrome thing, the ball is in Google's court to make a 64-bit version of their browser.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/OJORJFSWE1I?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/OJORJFSWE1I?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

I typically listen to ambient or minimal electronic music while I code, mostly because it tends to not have lyrics (which distract me if I'm doing anything language-based, like reading or writing), and because the music is generally unobtrusive enough to not demand a ton of my attention.