Since Friday, 1st October 2010 RAP 1.4 M2 is out. In this milestone we introduced some really great improvements. The first is that we gave RAP a facelift – that is, you’ll find a much cooler out-of-the-box look and feel.  Building on  the designs we created for RAP 1.3, RAP 1.4 comes with a more modern default look and feel.  You can still activate the old look optionally – you’ll find it in a separate bundle called the classic theme.  Compare the two looks here and see what you think.  (You can click on the images to zoom in.)

Before	After

The second big improvement in 1.4 M2 is the mobile Safari support, aka. support for using RAP on Apple’s mobile devices. We concentrated our work on making the widgets most used for this device, usable. Tim created a screencast which he mentioned in a previous post.

In a nutshell, I think this milestone is a big step towards another great release.

Tags: eclipse, indigo, rap

After the Helios Release, we are one step closer to Indigo. RAP 1.4 M1 is now available. From the new features, here are my personal top three:

1. We have a new implementation of the SWT Tree widget which is faster, more flexible, and provides many new features.
   
2. In order to support new application servers that already ship with Servlet API (javax.servlet.*) 3.0, RAP is now able to leverage the new Servlet specification. Deploying RAP on application servers like Tomcat 7 or Glassfish 3 is now possible.
3. Since RAP 1.3 you can easily use IApplications instead of IEntryPoints. With this milestone the RAP launcher supports choosing and launching IApplications.
   

• Check out the complete New and Noteworthy for M1.
• Get RAP 1.4 M1 from the RAP download site

Tags: eclipse, indigo, new and noteworthy, rap

Did you ever wanted to know how features find their way into Eclipse and became a part of a huge release like Eclipse Helios? What role do committers play? What is the part of the community? How do different projects collaborate with each other?

For all of you Benjamin Muskalla and I will give the answer on the Eclipse Helios DemoCamp in Darmstadt on July the 14th. If you are around feel free to step by.

Tags: democamp, eclipse, emf, helios, rap

As part of the new Eclipse Helios, the Rich Ajax Platform project released version 1.3. If you’d like to know what is new in RAP 1.3, here’s a short screencast.

You can find a more detailed version on the RAP 1.3 New and Noteworthy page.

Thanks to the community for all the hard work that made this great release possible.

Of course, we are currently making plans for RAP 1.4, which will be part of Indigo. Therefore,  we started a discussion on the plan items on our newsgroup. We’re looking forward to another great year with Indigo.

Tags: eclipse, eclipseRT, helios, indigo, rap

Did you ever want to know what the Rich Ajax Platform is without spending too much time on it? For all of those we did a screencast that shows what RAP is in about a minute.

You’ll also find the video on the RAP project page.

Tags: eclipse, helios, rap

Back in the old days, maintaining an Eclipse installation was easy. You just downloaded the Eclipse; it included the JDK and you used this Eclipse on all your workspaces.

But the number of useful plug-ins increased, and many are not included in the downloads from eclipse.org. Developers use different plug-ins in different workspace. For some developers, this leads to as many Eclipse installations as workspaces. Others capitulated and just don’t use many plug-ins even though they see their value; but managing the installations is just too hard. Others again have one huge installation that includes about everything for all the workspaces, and they too have pain with plug-in dependencies. They all suffer from plug-in dependencies.

Imagine you had a system where each plug-in you use is downloaded just once and reused whenever you need it for a new Eclipse IDE.

Yoxos 5 provides that.

Imagine you could just start your workspace and your IDE starts up including all plug-ins you want to work with in that workspace. If it is a new workspace you’d have automatically adjusted predefined settings, import projects etc.

Yoxos 5 excels at that.

Yoxos 5 unifies the workspace settings and its IDE description in a Yoxos Profile. A Yoxos Profile can be defined in a .yoxos file. The Yoxos Launcher creates Yoxos Profiles and starts them, for example when double-clicking the .yoxos file. Plug-ins are downloaded to the bundle pool and started only if the profile includes them.

Yoxos 5 is now in beta phase. You can try it out now:

• Download and install the Yoxos Launcher
• Download and start one of the sample profiles (further down at the download page)

Get more information at http://eclipsesource.com/yoxos5

Tags: eclipse, yoxos

From time to time, I’m in the situation when I want to suggest a UI change or even try to come up with a completely new UI. While I love programming, it may be easier in these situations to just “sketch” the idea instead of really getting your feet wet. As many people asked me what I use for UI sketches, I thought I should share it with you – the tool is called WireframeSketcher. It’s “just” an Eclipse plugin to create sketches pretty easily. As most of the UIs in my life are SWT-based, WireframeSketcher comes with one absolutely cool feature – turn an existing dialog into a sketch. Fire up any dialog, hit the magic “Alt+Shift+F5″ and you’re done. Is it that easy? Yes – I really love it. Here is an example of the Import Wizard which I also used in my latest blog post to further modify it with my ideas.

Not only is it easy to operate, it also has pretty good Eclipse integration and you always find the things where you expect them (eg. select and button and you can modify everything in the Properties View).

As Eclipse commiter, you can get a free licence of the plugin or you can buy the plugin from the author if you want to use it commercially. Either way, give it a try the next time you want to mock a new UI prototype.

Tags: eclipse, eclipse ui, sketch, swt, tips, ui, wireframesketcher

Here’s a nice Helios feature that comes in handy when you often work with multiple workspaces simultaneously (as we recommend for developing single source application with RCP and RAP). If you do, you probably know this which-is-which guessing when looking at your taskbar (or window switcher):

How can you distinguish your Eclipse instances? How can you tell in which workspace you are editing? There is a commandline parameter -showlocation that appends the workspace location to the window title – not very helpful either. Now since Helios M6, you can give your workspace a name in the Workspace preference page:

This name is then displayed in the window title:

Much better, isn’t it?

Tags: eclipse, helios, Single Sourcing

We are very pleased to report that the long awaited 2nd edition of the Eclipse RCP book (http://eclipsercp.org) is going to the presses on Thursday, April 15th. That means it should be in the stores by the end of the month. Of course, you don’t have to wait, you can pre-order from Amazon or read it online at Safari. Check out the book website for more info.

In addition to the snazzy new cover, this book is an update of the original content to include new technologies, updated workflows and more detail. Here is the marketing blurb from the back cover…

In Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Second Edition, three Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) project leaders show how to use Eclipse 3.5 (“Galileo”) to rapidly deliver cross-platform applications with rich, native-feel GUIs.

The authors fully reveal the power of Eclipse as a desktop application development platform; introduce important new improvements in Eclipse 3.5; and walk through developing a full-featured, branded RCP application for Windows, Linux, Mac, and other platforms—including handheld devices and kiosks.

Drawing on their extensive experience, the authors cover building, refining, and refactoring prototypes; customizing user interfaces; adding help and software management features; and building, branding, testing, and shipping finished software. They demonstrate current best practices for developing modular and dynamically extensible systems, using third-party code libraries, packaging applications for diverse environments, and much more.

For Java programmers at all levels of experience, this book

• Introduces important new RCP features such as p2, Commands, and Databinding
• Thoroughly covers key RCP-related technologies such as Equinox, SWT, JFace, and OSGi
• Shows how to effectively brand and customize RCP application look-and-feel
• Walks through user interface testing for RCP applications with SWTBot
• Illuminates key similarities and differences between RCP and conventional plug-in development

Hands-on, pragmatic, and comprehensive, this book offers all the real-world, nontrivial code example working developers need—as well as “deep dives” into key technical areas that are essential to your success.

Tags: book, eclipse, rcp, syndicate

Tags: eclipse, eclipsecon, emf, helios, new and noteworthy, rap, Single Sourcing, talks