Java Card

Hi
Am jumping from J2ee to Java card after i red about the connected edition and the fact that it supports servlets and new data types ....
i have to say that i have got no prior knowledge in old java card framework .
My questions here are :
Is there any good howto tutorials with good examples for real beginners ( am reading right now the one that comes with DK ) is there any other ones ?

my second questions :
can you confirm or not the following
There is no off-card application required when developing with the connected edition ( web ) only a browser required in the off-card machine +url with the right port ?
in this case APDU command are not required at all when doing it this way


Thanks a lot