<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/908c8465-09ba-4e72-8d66-a0848761fbac/93337259-9DF7-451D-9A6E-853EC7D5C842/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://openide.netbeans.org/tutorial/api-design.html" href="http://openide.netbeans.org/tutorial/api-design.html" style="font-size: 11px;">openide.netbeans.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://openide.netbeans.org/tutorial/api-design.html"><P> The other reason why to prefer methods can be found in the <EM>Java Virtual Machine</EM> specification. It is allowed to move a method from a class to one of its superclasses and still remain binary compatible. So a method initially introduced as <CODE>Dimension javax.swing.JComponent.getPreferredSize(Dimension d)</CODE> can be deleted in new version and moved to <CODE>Dimension java.awt.Component.getPreferredSize(Dimension d)</CODE> as the <CODE>JComponent</CODE> is a subclass of <CODE>Component</CODE> (this really happened in JDK 1.2). Such operation is not allowed for fields. Once a field is defined in a class, it has to stay there forever in order to keep binary compatibility. That is another reason why it is better to keep fields private. </P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/93337259-9DF7-451D-9A6E-853EC7D5C842/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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