Eclipse has released a plan for version 3.0, skipping on from its 2.2 branch. Version 3.0 requires J2SE 1.4, and is breaking some compatibility with its 2.x counterpart, which might frustrate a lot of plug-in developers.

On the other hand, new features like J2SE 1.5 Tiger early support are expected to be delivered, so you can dream of using generics and other language enhancements with even more ease.

View the draft plan for version 3.0

The Eclipse consortium also elected a new supporting member, INNOOPRACT, a German company that creates Eclipse plugins.

Read the press release INNOOPRACT Becomes Supporting Member of Eclipse

Great stuff!! But what is missing?? There have to be something??<br>
Improve keyboard bindings<br>
Eclipse should support custom key bindings in the places where the user reasonably expects.
<br>
and<br>
Rich client platform<br>
:)<br>
Improve Ant. Eclipse should allow the option of running Ant in a separately-specified JVM. The Ant editor should support refactoring inside Ant scripts<br>
what about this:
Extended Java Family theme
<br> JSP and SQLj are two instances of languages that use Java syntax. Eclipse should provide better support for Java-like source files<br>
Anyone played around with 2.5 and Eclipse?:
<br>
Address platform-specific UI performance problems.<br>
Will this go away in lk2.6 ? i.e is this a an issue in 2.5?<br>

Sorry for the breaks....<br> ;)

> Improve keyboard bindings<br>
> Eclipse should support custom key bindings in the places where the user reasonably expects.
>

Can't you already define custom key-bindings?

Here's the custom key-bindings I did today (Eclipse 2.1). In emacs, the Ctrl->X B command switches between windows. This was undefined in Eclipse. I was able to do this via windows-->properties-->key-bindings.

Now, having other key-binding emulators beyond emacs might be a good thing (I know there are plug-ins...but...). Also, having more emacs features would be a good thing (e.g., rectangular edits).

Cheers,
Frank

It's great to see that Eclipse is getting better and better...

Its the best Java IDE there is & I'm very glad to see it improve!

Is there a way to simply open a .java file and build it? I know I'll need to set up the classpath... But the way Eclipse forces the creation of a Project is cumbersome.

The ability to build open a .java file and build it is part of the 3.0 plan.

Yup, agree with you. That's why I'm using NetBeans. You can just easily mount a directory, choose your "src" and "class" directories and that's it. Just like under Linux. You can make your "project" if you want to, but you don't have to.

The support of ant in NetBeans is very nice. Click the ant script file and push F6 to execute it, that's it ;-) Nowadays I only use ant for all my "build" and "execution" management, no .sh or .bat and no IDE dependent project files. Ant rules! So, everyone can choose their own IDE. In this case NetBeans is much more nicer than Eclipse ;-)

Lofi Dewanto.
http://ejosa.sourceforge.net
http://openuss.sourceforge.net

Eclipse might be best ‘free’ IDE, but I prefer IntelliJ-IDE, which worth every penny spent on it!
IMO: Eclipse’s choice of SWT is very BAD thing.

Why? Because SWT needs to be ported to each platform? There's no particular reason why SWT couldn't be ported to AWT if that's what's bothering you.

The same way JDK has to be ported to each platform, IMHO SWT looks and feels much much better then Swing, best to my knowledge IBM ports SWT to all major platform, on the other hand nobody is going to develop on anything else then Windows, Mac, Linux, may be SUN, on all other platforms vi is good enough. In regard to the best IDE I still like IDEA more and wish them to switch to SWT, or SUN to drop AWT and Swing and have something like SWT, why to reinvent the wheel every time on every platform?

Not quite correct, only JVM and AWT libraries needs to be ported.

>IMHO SWT looks and feels much better then Swing,
IMO: Swing + Alloy L&F (used in IDEA) looks and feels better; actually IDEA is faster then Eclipse on my computer.

>In regard to the best IDE I still like IDEA more and wish them to switch to SWT, or SUN to drop AWT and Swing and have something like SWT,
>why to reinvent the wheel every time on every platform?
Why indeed? What is the reason?
There is Swing already, already ported…

>Not quite correct, only JVM and AWT libraries needs to be ported.

There is no such thing as JVM, it is logical term and doesn’t exist as a product you have to port the entire JDK to be able to develop or runtime if just to run java application, in addition AWT is not the only component which is using native code (java.net.*, preference API etc.)

>>IMHO SWT looks and feels much better then Swing,
>IMO: Swing + Alloy L&F (used in IDEA) looks and feels better; actually IDEA is faster then Eclipse on my computer.

You might have some kind of Swing hardware accelerator build into you motherboard, I’d like to get one as well. Based on my experience Eclipse UI runs smother on my machine and has a smaller memory footprint. Alloy looks nice but I don’t like when all applications looks one way the only java based looks the other, if someone really likes the exotic stuff then windows blinds is a better choice might be

>>In regard to the best IDE I still like IDEA more and wish them to switch to SWT, or SUN to drop AWT and Swing and have something like SWT,
>>why to reinvent the wheel every time on every platform?
Why indeed? What is the reason?
There is Swing already, already ported…

If we want to stop asking ourselves all the time why .Net client apps look better on windows then java based client apps and of course this is personal feeling only then we need one body to be responsible for the UI stuff, same applies to the Linux, Mac and all other platforms.

<Konstantin>IMO: Eclipse’s choice of SWT is very BAD thing.</Konstantin>

Only because it shows up AWT (or should I say IFC!) so badly...

If Sun had any sense it would integrate SWT into the core Java build.

/david

What about Jikes???

Did anyone see a date for the delivery of eclipse 3 ??
When will we get it? This autumn? Next year?

Things I hate in Eclipse

1. When you have a lot of editors opened, you get lost. To close then, WOW its sux.
2. Collapse/Contract tree is only for the entire tree
3. You cant define a layout to work. If you are working with a big project, navigate through the tree is a pain. I want to have panels to different levels of my tree.
4. Becareful during move refactoring... Sometimes you lost some imports, and you need to add by hand.

Otherwise, Eclipse is great, I love it.

>
> 1. When you have a lot of editors opened, you get lost. To close then, WOW its sux.

This is true. But I think that is a problem with most editors. I just set the keybinding to close an editor to Ctrl-W and it's easy to close windows then. Or just to a CTRL-SHIFT-F4 to close all the windows.

> 2. Collapse/Contract tree is only for the entire tree

I am not sure what you mean by this. You can open/close any branch of the tree in the Package Explorer just like in Windows Explorer or some such.

> 3. You cant define a layout to work. If you are working with a big project, navigate through the tree is a pain. I want to have panels to different levels of my tree.

Not true. Eclipse has the concept of a Working Set. I haven't actually used it, but I think it does what you are describing here.

> 4. Becareful during move refactoring... Sometimes you lost some imports, and you need to add by hand.

I've never had any problems with the refactoring and I am working on a project that has close to 5000 java files!

> Otherwise, Eclipse is great, I love it.

Eclipse Rocks! Can't wait for 3.0.

> 1. When you have a lot of editors opened, you get lost. To close then, WOW its sux.
<Mark Townsend>
This is true. But I think that is a problem with most editors. I just set the keybinding to close an editor to Ctrl-W and it's easy to close windows then. Or just to a CTRL-SHIFT-F4 to close all the windows.
</Mark Townsend>

Now I have limited the number of opened editor to 6, Its working fine. Better than get lost. PS. There is a plugin to help you to close editors.


> 3. You cant define a layout to work. If you are working with a big project, navigate through the tree is a pain. I want to have panels to different levels of my tree.
<Mark Townsend>
Not true. Eclipse has the concept of a Working Set. I haven't actually used it, but I think it does what you are describing here.
</Mark Townsend>


What I want is to have 2 or more Package Explorers, mapped to different levels of my project, in one view. In Eclipse you cant do it, and I use a lot working sets, because of a lot of files and projects in my workspace.


> > 4. Becareful during move refactoring... Sometimes you lost some imports, and you need to add by hand.
<Mark Townsend>
> I've never had any problems with the refactoring and I am working on a project that has close to 5000 java files!
</Mark Townsend>

If you have a class that depends on classes not public. Them you move this class to other package, Eclipse will not add the import to the classes. To complete the refactor, you will need change classes to public and add the import by hand. Eclipse should do it.


In Eclipse, I also like the Fast View. Its a great tool

Would you like to tell me how to develop JSP program using eclipse3.0?