Elias Volanakis

Git Best Practices

August 5, 2013

At EclipseSource and Eclipse we love git, as you can tell by the 582 public repositories on Eclipse’s github page.

How to track lifecycle changes of OSGi bundles

January 23, 2013

This post explains how to track changes in the lifecycle state of OSGi bundles, using two different techniques: an OSGi BundleListener and an Eclipse BundleWatcher.

Cross-platform mobile apps in Java with Tabris

December 14, 2012

I presented our work on Tabris at  “Eclipse Day @ Google” earlier this week. With Tabris you use Java to create native mobile applications for iOS and Android. My slides below provide a quick introduction:

A secure user account system with Eclipse RAP

November 1, 2012

Recently, I developed a “user account” system for a customer’s Eclipse RAP application. Here are a few do’s and don’ts, which I learned in the process.

Using shared libraries with Eclipse RCP

August 18, 2012

This post describes an easy – but little known way – to use native libraries (.dlls) with Eclipse RCP.

Configuring the OS-X application menu for SWT apps

July 19, 2012

If you write a ‘pure’ SWT application on the Mac (i.e. just SWT – no RCP/workbench), you will notice that the OS-X application menu is not properly configured. It just displays ‘SWT’ instead of the application name. Furthermore, the ‘About SWT’ and ‘Preferences…’ menu entries have no effect.

Drawing on images with Eclipse RAP

June 13, 2012

Recently, I was asked how to create a web application that allows the user to draw on images:

EclipseCon Excercise update

March 23, 2011

Big thanks to all  runners who keep showing up for the EclipseCon run each morning. Particularly the brave bunch running in the rain today!

Let's run together at EclipseCon 2011

February 12, 2011

38 days left until EclipseCon – Sure, you’ve registered, booked the flight and hotel, checked your passport. Next: pack your running shoes!

Portland DemoCamp 11/2010 - Photos and Slides

November 13, 2010

Thanks to everybody who attended or presented at the Portland Eclipse DemoCamp last Monday. This time the theme was “Eclipse for mobile developers”. We had about 50 attending, which is a strong uptick from past events.

Portland DemoCamp: Mobile Development with Eclipse - 11/8, 6pm

November 5, 2010

If you want to learn more about Android / Blackberry / iPad development while enjoying some free pizza and beer, I would be glad to see you next Monday. Will have three presentations:

Eclipse RAP - What's new in Helios? (Slides)

August 19, 2010

Here are the slides from my “Eclipse RAP - What’s new in Helios?” talk, which I gave at the Bay Area Demo Camp in June. They capture the most interesting novelties of the RAP 1.3 release. You can find even more details in the full release notes.

Last week in Riena: 3.0 announced, Web support, ESE talks

August 19, 2010

Here are three recent developments from Eclipse Riena, that you may otherwise have missed:

Tip: How to detect that a View was Detached

June 23, 2010

Here is a question that I got on a post about detached views:

Error marker for SWT table rows - easy as pie

March 4, 2010

Here’s a nice addition to Riena’s TableRidget: you can now mark a table-row as incorrect.

Shared libraries with Eclipse CDT and cygwin on Windows

March 3, 2010

Can you help me use shared libraries with Eclipse CDT, managed make and cygwin?”, I was asked yesterday. Read on for a list of common pitfalls and detailed instructions.

My thoughts on eclipse e5

February 8, 2010

Let’s assume for the moment, that in an alternate reality I can travel back in time to 2008. Once there, I meet a bright bunch of people that work on something called e5 (executive summary.odp). My summary:

5 new things in Riena 2.0 M5 (just shipped)

February 4, 2010

We proudly present Riena 2.0 M5 - the first release in the 2.0 stream.  As you can see by the long New & Noteworthy, we have been very active in last six weeks. Read on for my five favorite new things:

Eclipse Riena 1.2.0.M3 shipped - releasing in December

November 24, 2009

We Riena committers smoothly shipped a fresh Riena Milestone last Friday, this time 1.2.0.M3 (download). Here’s the New & Noteworthy and the list of resolved items.

Where's your project set? Getting Eclipse sources easily!

November 13, 2009

As you know, Eclipse can use “Team Project Set” files (.psf) to magically import code from various repositories. Thanks to Karl (294842), we committers can now set a project set url in our project’s metadata. This will link to a .psf-file from our project’s About page.

Eclipse 3.6 M3 (Helios) available for download

November 2, 2009

Milestone #3 for Eclipse 3.6 is now available for download.

Riena at the Eclipse Summit Europe

October 26, 2009

If you are at the Eclipse Summit Europe this week, here are some interesting talks about the work going on in and around Eclipse Riena:

Tip: Computing the difference of two collections

October 23, 2009

Sometimes you have two collections and want to know how they differ. It would also be useful to have a series of steps that transform collection ‘A’ into collection ‘B’ (or the reverse).

Eclipse Riena 1.2.0.M2 released

October 14, 2009

The Riena committers have just done it again: Riena 1.2.0.M2 is now out the door (download). Here’s the New & Noteworthy and the issues fixed in this milestone. Read on for my personal favorites:

RAP Case Study: Numiton Migration Tools

September 21, 2009

I always want to hear why people pick the Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) and what applications they are building with it. Last week I send a few questions to Robert Enyedi, CEO at Numiton.com, to find out how they use RAP.

IPZilla hurting community contributions?

August 28, 2009

Here are two ways the Eclipse IP process is discouraging community contributions:

Eclipse Riena 1.2.0.M1 released

August 24, 2009

The Fellowship of Riena just released 1.2.0.M1. (download). We committers have fixed 40+ issues and added a couple of new features. Below are my personal favorites.

Introduction to Eclipse Riena UI and Navigation

August 22, 2009

Starting out with Eclipse Riena?  I hope you find my one-picture-summary of the Riena UI and navigation useful:

Testing hard to test code with EasyMock

July 11, 2009

If you are into unit testing, you may find EasyMock quite useful. It is very valuable for making hard-to-test-code testable.

Tracing Keybindings in Eclipse RCP

July 8, 2009

When adding keybindings to an existing Eclipse RCP application, it is extremelly helpful to get realtime information about which keybinding registered and to what command handlers it is mapped to. Why is that?  Because sometimes the operating system or another widget will consume the keyboard event before it gets to the command framework. Other times there are several handlers bound to the same key causing a conflict.

Portland Galileo DemoCamp 2009 - RAP Slides

June 19, 2009

This Thursday we had a great Galileo DemoCamp in Portland. Pictures from the event are on Gabe’s blog and Darin has posted a summary of all presentations. Thanks to the nice folks at Instantiations and the Eclipse Foundation Portland for putting this together!

Tutorial - First steps with RAP and Eclipse 3.5

June 5, 2009

This RAP tutorial will have you developing web-applications with the Rich Ajax Platform in no time.

Java One - Good looking apps with RAP

June 1, 2009

If you are at JavaOne, drop by the Eclipse Foundation (Mo 5-7pm, Tu 11:30-1-30) or EclipseSource booths (all week) for a demo of the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP).

UI.toString() in a snippet

May 8, 2009

Ever wanted to get a print out of all components that make up a piece of UI?

Having fun with detached views!

April 25, 2009

Yesterday, I had fun investigating how to open “detached” views progammatically.

Replacing the Perspective-Switcher in RCP apps

March 31, 2009

For simple RCP Applications the Perspective-Switcher widget that ships with Eclipse is overloaded and cumbersome to use.

Riena article on DZone

March 31, 2009

As a Riena committer, it’s always nice to see people taking interest in Riena. Feedback  at EclipseCon has been very positive. I was also impressed by  RedView - a UI-generator based on EMF and Riena, which is becoming available soon.

Riena 3.5.M6 is out, discuss at EclipseCon

March 18, 2009

Riena 3.5.M6 is available, just in time for EclipseCon (new and noteworthy).

Eclipse Riena 1.1.0 M5 shipped

March 4, 2009

Riena 1.1.0 Milestone 5 shipped today (download).

Since the 1.0 release a month ago we Riena committers have been busy with several new features:  

RAP 1.2 M2 available

October 10, 2008

We shipped RAP 1.2 Milestone 2 this week.

New and noteworthy items include:

Eclipse RAP 1.1 M3 released

April 7, 2008

The RAP team just announced the availability of RAP 1.1 M3.

Would you believe this is a browser based Application?

March 19, 2008

Here are two amazing screenshots from a RAP-based application which was unveiled earlier this month. The team at CAS Software launched a hosted CRM solution based on RAP. They did a great job of customizing and polishing the RAP UI to create a unique look-and-feel.

Getting started with the RAP Calculator Example

March 11, 2008

Below are some brief instructions on how to import and run the RAP Calculator Example, which I currently use in my talks.

RAP "Guide" to the EclipseCon 2008

March 4, 2008

Just two weeks to go ’til the next EclipseCon. Once again the schedule is packed with ten parallel sessions and a dazzling amount of interesting talks.

RAP at the Seattle CodeCamp (with slides)

January 25, 2008

Interested in the Rich Ajax Platform and residing in the Seattle area?

RAP Deployment - Part 2: Deploying as a WAR

December 7, 2007

This post is out of date for RAP 1.2 (Galileo). You’ll find the most recent deployment instructions here.

RAP Deployment - Part 1: Deploying your application with Jetty

November 28, 2007

This post is out of date for RAP 1.2 (Galileo).

How to Embed a RAP Application in a Web Page

November 19, 2007

A slightly overlooked aspect of RAP Applications is that they do *not* have to take the whole page in your browser. Instead they can also be embedded into an existing web page. The example below is embedded into this blog post and is fully usable. My pet-term for such an application is “RAPplet” - kinda like an applet but without the need for a JVM in the browser.

Article: Web 2.0 the Eclipse Way

October 31, 2007

Interested in the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) but somehow missing the courage to take the first steps? This “Introduction to RAP” by Chris Aniszczyk and Benjamin Muskalla will give you a head start.

RAP 1.0 - What you won't find in the New & Noteworthy

October 17, 2007

RAP 1.0 has been released and you’ve probably heard about it already, as it was well covered by blogs and press alike. Read on for a couple for helpful items, which didn’t make the New & Noteworthy, as they are not part of the RAP Target Platform, but available through the RAP SDK Feature.

Web-enabled RCP Applications with the Remote Application Platform

October 9, 2007

This 5-page article, by RAP committers Benjamin Muskalla and Ralf Sternberg, introduces the Rich Ajax Platform Project (RAP) and explains why it is the rich internet application framework of choice for Eclipse RCP developers.

Upcoming RAP Talks on Oct 10th and Oct 16th

October 8, 2007

Curious about the Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform? Want to learn more about it and ask some questions? Then consider attending one of these upcoming talks: