Eclipse's Jseclipse Plugin

Using the Jseclipse,javascript programmer now has its own Eclipse plug-in, which provides a number of important features to assist in developing JavaScript applications. Like Eclipse, which has provided ease of use for the Java™ language and other languages over the years, Jseclipse provides the same benefits for JavaScript developers.



Get Jseclipse

If you do not have the Eclipse IDE installed, install it now (see System requirements). This tutorial uses Eclipse V3.3.1.1, so if you are experiencing a plug-in installation problem, you can try to install the version.

The next step is to get the Jseclipse plugin. The easiest way to do this is to use Eclipse's built-in update system:

Install Eclipse.
Start Eclipse.
If necessary, select Go to Workbench.
From the Workbench menu, select Help > Software Updates > Find and Install.
Select Search for new features to install.
Click Next to continue creating a new update site.
Create a new update site

New features and Plug-ins are hosted in a specific update site. Some of these sites have been preconfigured in the Eclipse installation, but you will need to add a new update site for Jseclipse:

Click the New Update Site on the right side of the window.
Enter the name Jseclipse (or any other name you remember) and the URL Http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/jseclipse/autoinstall.
Click OK to add the new site to the list.
Install Jseclipse

When the new site is ready, you can use it to install Jseclipse:

Make sure that the new site you want to update is selected by selecting the check box next to the new site, and then click Finish.
Jseclipse is the only one by one features hosted in this site, so it should be very easy to find. Select the Jseclipse feature and click Next.
Accept the license agreement and click Next.
Verify the Eclipse installation location and click Finish.
For security (and code Integrity) reasons, the actual installation will see if the feature has been signed. It has not yet been signed, so make sure you need to install this unsigned feature, as shown in Figure 5, and then click Install.
When the installation is complete, click Apply Changes. You should not have to restart Eclipse, but it is a good idea to reboot if Eclipse is not running properly.

Now that the Jseclipse is installed, you need to configure it.



Configure Jseclipse

Using the Jseclipse plug-in allows you to control the user experience very well. To configure Jseclipse, select Window > Preferences > Jseclipse to open Preferences.

There are four of jseclipse preferences.

General Preferences
These are preferences, such as the time to wait to eject the AutoComplete drop-down menu, whether to perform error reporting, and whether to highlight other occurrences of the current variable.
Syntax Coloring
With Jseclipse, you can not only fully control color-coded content, such as function names, variables, and so on, but also fully control which color represents which item, so that you can read more easily, or match existing color patterns, for example, from another editor.
Templates
As you will be easy to program with code templates: As you can see in the Multidimensional Arrays section, Jseclipse includes common types of code templates, such as for loops, functions, and so on. Use this template to activate or deactivate an existing template, and to import new templates as needed.
Typing
One of the advantages of using the IDE is that you can automate tasks such as adding closing parentheses. If you feel that using this feature will make you lazy, you can turn this feature off in your preferences here.
Next, you need to set up Eclipse to use the plug-in.



Set Jseclipse as JavaScript Editor

You need to tell Eclipse that it has a dedicated editor for JavaScript files, so that it will not use a generic text editor. Select Window > Preferences > General > Editors > File Associations. Highlight the *.js file name extension and make sure that Jseclipse is the relevant editor.

If you do not have a *.js extension, click the Add button at the top, and then add the extension to the dialog box. If the *.js extension does not use Jseclipse as its default editor, click the Add button at the bottom. Select Internal Editors > Jseclipse HTML Editor and click Add to set it as default