- Support for older Win9x versions dropped; unofficially, Java 6 Update 7 was the last release of Java shown to work on these versions of Windows.[citation needed] This is believed[by whom?] to be due to the major changes in Update 10.
- Scripting Language Support (JSR 223): Generic API for tight integration with scripting languages, and built-in Mozilla JavaScript Rhino integration.
- Dramatic performance improvements for the core platform,[55][56] and Swing.
- Improved Web Service support through JAX-WS (JSR 224).
- JDBC 4.0 support (JSR 221).
- Java Compiler API (JSR 199): an API allowing a Java program to select and invoke a Java Compiler programmatically.
- Upgrade of JAXB to version 2.0: Including integration of a StAX parser.
- Support for pluggable annotations (JSR 269).[57]
- Many GUI improvements, such as integration of SwingWorker in the API, table sorting and filtering, and true Swing double-buffering (eliminating the gray-area effect).
- JVM improvements include: synchronization and compiler performance optimizations, new algorithms and upgrades to existing garbage collection algorithms, and application start-up performance.