For the first lab we will just get you started again with the NetBeans environment and back into the swing of programming with a simple exercise: write a (GUI) program which will:
convert a String into a form where all letters are uppercase (leave other characters alone) and another form where all letters are lowercase; and
convert numerals between any two number bases given (bases should be positive integers greater than 1).
One caveat, however, related to the content of the course: don't use any Java libraries for the conversion process (of course you may for the GUI). In other words, you should do the conversion “yourself”, in your own code, character by character. (You can cast character values in Java to get their integer values.)
Here are a couple of diagrams which should give you a sense of what the program should look like and some hints about how to proceed (in these pictures, the input areas are white, and the outputs are grey).
[Note: if you don't see the second picture above, then your browser may not support PNG graphics. If so, let me know and I'll convert to GIFs or JPGs.]