« Spring modules for... | Main | links for 2007-02-12 »

Top 10 Reasons to upgrade to Eclipse 3.3 M5 right now

posted 02:18PM Feb 11, 2007 with tags eclipse java softwaredevelopment tips by Lars Trieloff

Eclipse's last milestone for the 3.3 release is out for two days, and these are my top-10 reasons to upgrade:
  1. SWT libraries automatically found (since M4) - this eases deployment of SWT applications dramatically. No longer setting java.library.path, just one single dependency, easily expressed as a Maven 2 dependency
  2. System tray support added on Mac OS X (since M1, somehow workable since M4 - your starting class has to be in package org.eclipse.swt) - Now there is real cross-platform support for tray icons, notification area icons or menubar items
  3. Code clean up on save (since M3) - makes it easy to adhere to coding conventions without much manual formatting
  4. Text drag and drop in text editors (since M5) - very useful for manual reording of code
  5. Advanced tooltips (since M4) - tooltips can contain more than text
  6. New DateTime control (since M3) - date and time entry with improved usability
  7. Mozilla Everywhere (since M5) - when you need a controlled web browser control and cannot rely on the operating system's default
  8. Improved completion in annotations (since M2) - good for users of libraries like DAX that use annotations.
  9. Working sets for the Project Explorer (since M2) - working set support for non-Java projects
  10. Apply Patch offers full context patch preview (since M2)
There are numerous other improvements in these five milestones, but these are the features I like most and that convice me to upgrade to Eclipse 3.3M5 and use SWT 3.3M5 and JFace 3.3M5 for desktop GUI development.

Comments:

Post a Comment:
Comments are closed for this entry.
« Spring modules for... | Main | links for 2007-02-12 »