J2SE 1.4 features

Major improvement

XML Processing
Java Print Service
Logging API
Java Web Start
JDBC 3.0 API
Assertions
Preferences API
Chained Exception
IPv6 Support
Regular Expressions
Image I/O API
regular expressions modeled after Perl regular expressions
exception chaining allows an exception to encapsulate original lower-level exception
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support
non-blocking IO (named NIO) (New Input/Output) (Specified in JSR 51.)
logging API (Specified in JSR 47.)
image I/O API for reading and writing images in formats like JPEG and PNG
integrated XML parser and XSLT processor (JAXP) (Specified in JSR 5 and JSR 63.)
integrated security and cryptography extensions (JCE, JSSE, JAAS)
Java Web Start included (Java Web Start was first released in March 2001 for J2SE 1.3) (Specified in JSR 56.)
Preferences API (java.util.prefs)