41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Learning by building something concrete!, December 3, 2005
This is really an awesome book because:
* I was suprised how extremely complete this book is. It not only explain how to develop a application, but also how you do your HELP-system, the plugin update mechanism, dynamic plugins, brand and package your application. Also chapter 25 called 'The last mile' explain Native Installers, Webstart and multi user install scenario. SO:it explains the whole cycle, for creating windows/views, creating the help, and distributing the application!
* It offers a tutorial for building a real world application what the authors have called Hyperbola (a Chat client). This tutorial has a good level, compared to books like '... for dummies', '... in 24 hours' and '... unleashed'.
* The tutorial application EVOLVES over the chapters. So after the end of every chapter the application is running, and more (complex) functionality is added every chapter. So you don't need to follow all chapters before you see results of your work (it's not a big bang application). This keep you motivated to follow the book and play arround.
Or how the authors call it in the book:
"The next few chapters focus on iteratively developing Hyperbola. This next interation is interesting because it allows you to quickly get something running you can show to your mom, your boss, or your friends. It's also a lot more fun to learn RCP while developing something concrete."
* Every chapter starts with the goals of this chapter,e.g. what you will add to the application in this chapter.
* This book does NOT contains cheap fillers (some books repeat things endless, starts with chapters introducing Java, prints the Java Doc of a library,etc.). It is simply to the point.
* The tutorial is very complete and contains a lot of explaination about what you're doing. It is not one big listing. E.g. it explain what Actions are, what you can do with it, where to code them, and of course how to code them in your Hyperbola application.
* It is very complete because it e.g. starts how to install Eclipse and the Eclipse RCP SDK and how you need to configure them. This is a real timesaver for novice Eclipse people. You just need to follow the steps in the introduction chapter.
So this is a learning-by-doing book with a good level. After you have read this book (and played with Eclipse), you are able to develop simple RCP-applications, you know how the RCP is structured, how to package them, etc.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
How quickly things become obsolete, July 31, 2006
I bought this book almost the first day it became available, I think in November of last year, and loved it, despite numerous minor errata which I submitted but have not been published. It explains the structure of the RCP very well, as well as I have seen anywhere. Parts I, III, IV and V are excellent.
This is a great introduction to Eclipse RCP ... _IF_ you are happy to stay with Eclipse 3.1 and Java 1.4. _BUT_ sadly, Eclipse 3.2 has obsoleted some of the techniques used in Part II, the tutorial, which is the main part of the book. For in 3.2 example you no longer need to create a target manually yourself. Also the tutorial's code uses APIs that are deprecated in Eclipse 3.2, and it uses code seen as undesirable by Java 1.5's generics support. In addition Eclipse 3.2 mandates the com.ibm.icu (International Components for Unicode) package which means that the tutorial as delivered simply will not deploy as-is when you get to the packaged product level in Chapter 9.
Yes, all these problems are fixable. But be careful because you will have to fix these problems manually, which cuts you off from the cool "Samples Manager" tool which synchronizes your code at the end of each chapter.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a book for those who try to understand what they're doing, March 4, 2006
This book starts out in a very promising manner - coming in from a 10,000 ft view to a 1,000 ft view. After reading Part I, I felt that I had a great book in my hands. With Part II however came the big let down: you're suddenly dropped into a chaotic sea of microscopic views. With its (basically laudable) approach by example, it turns essentially into a collection of recipes, that does very little to the understanding of the underlying structure and concepts of RCP. This is probably a great book if you know what you want to do and why, it is however inadequate if you are in search of the why. It leaves too many loose ends, and in numerous instances assumes that you have fully absorbed the superficial ideas of earlier sections and hence leaves you hanging there. Calling the CD to the rescue - again a great idea how it is integrated - does not always help: for instance Chapter 10 seems to be totally messed up. The text and examples contain a number of misleading typos or omissions, and references are given to Eclipse code that I could not find.
In hindsight I sense that much of the frustration with Part II could be avoided by starting with Parts III and IV: after working through these latter parts, I felt more at ease filling out the unfortunate and time consuming gaps in Part II.
I suspect also that both the code and the book will need to be updated for release 3.2.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
