The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

Jim D'Anjou (Author), Scott Fairbrother (Author), Dan Kehn (Author), John Kellerman (Author), Pat McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321305027 | ISBN-13: 978-0321305022 | Publication Date: November 5, 2004 | Edition: 2

“Fully updated and revised for Eclipse 3.0, this book is the definitive Eclipse reference—an indispensable guide for tool builders, rich client application developers, and anyone customizing or extending the Eclipse environment.”

—Dave Thomson, Eclipse Project Program Director, IBM

The Ultimate Guide to Eclipse 3.0 for the Java Developer. No Eclipse Experience Required!

Eclipse is a world-class Java integrated development environment (IDE) and an open source project and community. Written by members of the IBM Eclipse Jumpstart team, The Java™ Developer’s Guide to Eclipse, Second Edition, is the definitive Eclipse companion. As in the best-selling first edition, the authors draw on their considerable experience teaching Eclipse and mentoring developers to provide guidance on how to customize Eclipse for increased productivity and efficiency.

In this greatly expanded edition, readers will find

• A total update, including the first edition’s hallmark, proven exercises—all revised to reflect Eclipse 3.0 changes to the APIs, plug-ins, UI, widgets, and more
• A special focus on rich client support with a new chapter and two exercises
• A comprehensive exercise on using Eclipse to develop a Web commerce application using Apache’s Tomcat
• A new chapter on JFace viewers and added coverage of views
• A new chapter on internationalization and accessibility
• New chapters on performance tuning and Swing interoperability

Using this book, those new to Eclipse will become proficient with it, while advanced developers will learn how to extend Eclipse and build their own Eclipse-based tools. The accompanying CD-ROM contains Eclipse 3.0, as well as exercise solutions and many code examples.

Whether you want to use Eclipse and Eclipse-based offerings as your integrated development environment or customize Eclipse further, this must-have book will quickly bring you up to speed.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

“Fully updated and revised for Eclipse 3.0, this book is the definitive Eclipse reference—an indispensable guide for tool builders, rich client application developers, and anyone customizing or extending the Eclipse environment.”

—Dave Thomson, Eclipse Project Program Director, IBM

The Ultimate Guide to Eclipse 3.0 for the Java Developer. No Eclipse Experience Required!

Eclipse is a world-class Java integrated development environment (IDE) and an open source project and community. Written by members of the IBM Eclipse Jumpstart team, The Java™ Developer’s Guide to Eclipse, Second Edition, is the definitive Eclipse companion. As in the best-selling first edition, the authors draw on their considerable experience teaching Eclipse and mentoring developers to provide guidance on how to customize Eclipse for increased productivity and efficiency.

In this greatly expanded edition, readers will find

• A total update, including the first edition’s hallmark, proven exercises—all revised to reflect Eclipse 3.0 changes to the APIs, plug-ins, UI, widgets, and more
• A special focus on rich client support with a new chapter and two exercises
• A comprehensive exercise on using Eclipse to develop a Web commerce application using Apache’s Tomcat
• A new chapter on JFace viewers and added coverage of views
• A new chapter on internationalization and accessibility
• New chapters on performance tuning and Swing interoperability

Using this book, those new to Eclipse will become proficient with it, while advanced developers will learn how to extend Eclipse and build their own Eclipse-based tools. The accompanying CD-ROM contains Eclipse 3.0, as well as exercise solutions and many code examples.

Whether you want to use Eclipse and Eclipse-based offerings as your integrated development environment or customize Eclipse further, this must-have book will quickly bring you up to speed.

About the Author

Jim D’Anjou is a senior software engineer and a certified IT Specialist located at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, California. He has a degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. Jim has more than twenty-five years of industry experience at IBM and elsewhere. He has held a variety of technical and management positions developing products for relational databases, database tools, application repositories, and application development tools. He holds two U.S. patents for work in software process automation. In March 2001, he joined the Eclipse Jumpstart team and serves as an instructor and industry consultant.

Scott Fairbrother is an advisory software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Scott is a software developer with more than twenty years of experience. He has developed object-oriented application frameworks for business process management. He has written specifications for IBM middleware on Windows 2000 and has also written about Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Most recently, Scott has worked on the Eclipse Jumpstart team, helping IBM and partners create commercial offerings based on Eclipse. He received a B.S. in marine biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Dan Kehn is a senior software engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. His interest in object-oriented programming goes back to 1985, long before it enjoyed the acceptance it has today. He has a broad range of software experience, having worked on development tools like VisualAge for Smalltalk, operating system performance and memory analysis, and user interface design. Dan worked as a consultant for object-oriented development projects throughout the United States, as well as for four years in Europe. His recent interests include object-oriented analysis/design, application development tools, and Web programming with the WebSphere Application Server. He is currently concentrating on performance analysis and tuning of IBM Eclipse-based projects.

John Kellerman joined IBM in 1984 with a computer science degree from Purdue University. He has since completed graduate degrees in computer engineering at North Carolina State and business administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has spent the majority of his twenty years at IBM in the development and management of application development tool products, including ISPF/PDF, VisualAge Smalltalk, VisualAge Generator, and Eclipse. John was a founding member of the Eclipse Project, which got under way in late 1999. He is currently IBM Product Manager of Eclipse. His responsibilities include working closely on behalf of IBM with eclipse.org, the Eclipse Foundation, and the member companies to help grow the Eclipse community of contributors and commercial offerings.

Pat McCarthy, a senior software engineer at IBM, is a specialist in the use and management of development technologies on a variety of runtime platforms. Pat’s IBM career has included hands-on development of business application systems in Poughkeepsie, New York, and 12 years of project management for the development of IBM Redbooks and education offerings in San Jose, California. He has spent the last several years in Raleigh, North Carolina, focused on supporting the use of Eclipse technology in IBM application development products. Pat has a B.S. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. from Marist College. He is the coauthor of more than twenty IBM Redbooks.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1136 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 2 edition (November 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321305027
• ISBN-13: 978-0321305022
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one Eclipse book you should own, January 19, 2005

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

The first edition of this book was excellent for plug-in developers and helpful, although not vital, to all others. Two things make this new edition even better than the first edition. First, plug-in development in Eclipse is now so easy and so well explained in this book that there is no reason why anyone shouldn't be doing it. Have you ever worked with an IDE and thought, "why isn't this function available in the pop-up menu" or "why doesn't it have this feature"? Developing a plug-in will allow you to customize the functionality of Eclipse to provide the missing feature and this book will clearly explain exactly how to do that. Second, the section of the book that deals with developing with Eclipse has been improved with detailed chapters on team development including using CVS as well as an excellent example of integrating with Tomcat to develop an E-Commerce application.

The book is divided into two sections. The first 200 pages deal with using Eclipse and cover everything from the basics to complex team development issues. The next 600 pages cover everything you need to know about extending the functionality of Eclipse. The book ends with 200 pages of exercises that give detailed, step-by-step examples. Five exercises deal with using Eclipse while the rest show examples of extending Eclipse. It is a big book that covers a lot of material but it covers it clearly and with plenty of examples. If you buy one Eclipse book, this should be it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for those writing plug-ins, June 16, 2003

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Java(TM) Developer's Guide to Eclipse (Paperback)

The authors of this book are part of a core IBM group formed to share knowledge of the Eclipse universal IDE. The first part of this book deals with using Eclipse from a Java developers point of view. I found this was not any more helpful than the documentation available on the Eclipse web site. Eclipse works extensively with plug-ins that can be integrated into the Eclipse environment to provide new functionality. I would have liked to see something on some of the more popular plug-ins such as those used to run application servers. Even a list of where to go to get plug-ins would have been helpful. Unfortunately, this part of the book only covers the basics of what comes with Eclipse and does not discuss any existing plug-ins.

The second part of the book, about 450 pages, covers writing your own plug-ins. This part of the book is excellent. It covers not just the basics, but virtually everything you need to know to write your own plug-ins. Whether you wish to code a new toolbar, editor, specialized view, or wizard, it is all covered in this section. With this book you will be writing plug-ins in a fraction of the time you would have otherwise spent. The book also contains exercises which allow you to test your new knowledge.

If your only goal is to use Eclipse then you don't need this book. If your desire is to write plug-ins then I wouldn't even try without it.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Continues to be excellent reference for Eclipse developers, November 15, 2004

By 

Beth R. Tibbitts "Beth Tibbitts" (Lexington, KY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse (JDG2E), 2nd edition,
is an updated version of the original popular
and very useful bible for Eclipse developers.
The first book to truly cover Eclipse 3.0 extensively
in both the usage of the IDE (how to use Eclipse) and in developing
plug-ins (how to extend Eclipse), it remains my "bible" in
developing Eclipse plug-ins. Many developer resources as extensive
as this one suffer from the "can't open it anywhere" syndrome.
I rarely have time to read a book from cover to cover at one (or adjacent)
setting. I like a book to use more as a reference, to look up what I want
to do and find a snippet of code, or an idea, to get me on my way.
This book is great in that respect - countless parts of my own plug-ins
have started from a code snippet found in one of the chapters.

The examples are simple enough to follow, in chunks that don't
require you to have read the whole book, but interesting enough
to show you some of the really useful intricacies of Eclipse.

The authors are experienced in training Java developers in Eclipse
plug-in development, and their experience shows in their practical
explanations, example code, and in the exercises included
on the CD in the back of the book.
I have so far only browsed the information on the CD but there
is much supplemental information there in additional to the provided
exercises.