Proficient in Eclipse V3.4, part 1th: Eclipse Workbench

Part 1th, for new users of Eclipse, will explain some of the eclipse terminology that is often difficult to understand and introduce the various parts of the eclipse IDE to the Eclipse Novice. This article explains what the Eclipse Workbench is, and explores the differences between the project and the work space (methods of the Eclipse Organization source code) and their relationships. Finally, this article shows you how to customize parts of the IDE as needed.

Table

The main Eclipse window is called the Working table (see Figure 1). It contains content such as menu bars, toolbars, editors, and views. The area below the toolbar where you place the editor and other views is called the Workbench page. This page contains most of the visible parts of the interface: editors and views.

Figure 1. Eclipse Workbench

Editor

The editor is the primary content area for your development activities in Eclipse. Note that the term "editor" does not necessarily represent a text editor, and even the WYSIWYG form designer can be considered an editor. The Eclipse Workbench with toolbars and views can become very crowded, so if the editor requires more space, click the Maximize button in the upper-right corner. Doing so hides all other views, providing more screen space to the editor. You can restore all views by clicking Restore.

Sometimes you need to view more than one editor window at a time, you may need to copy and paste some content from one editor window to another, or you need to read the information in another editor window when you type in an editor window. To help implement this feature, Eclipse allows you to stack the editor window side-by or cascade. To do this, you need to drag the tab of an open editor window to a side or top/bottom, and it will stack on one side, allowing you to easily use an open editor.

If you have many editor windows open, it can be time-consuming to switch to the desired tab by manually scanning and clicking the Multiline tab. Eclipse provides a handy shortcut to simplify this: by pressing Ctrl+e, the pop-up menu appears in the upper-right corner of the tab line and lists all the open editors (see Figure 2). You can select one or start typing the editor name you want to open, and then the list will start filtering.

Figure 2. Pressing the CTRL+E key will display a pop-up menu that allows easy switching between editor windows

View

A view is a small window docked on one side of the editor that contains more information about the contents of the editor. Minimize the view by clicking the Minimize button in the upper-right corner, which is minimized to the shortcut bar on one side of the window (see Figure 3). Clicking the View button in the shortcut bar will temporarily eject the view. This is a good way to save screen space while still having easy access to the view.

Figure 3. The shortcut bar allows you to minimize the view while still providing access

You can detach a view from its location. To detach a view, drag it outside the Workbench window, or right-click its tab and select Detach. The detached view runs like a new window and appears at the top of the Workbench window. Views can also dock on different sides of the workbench window. To do this, drag the View tab and place it on the side you want to dock. To open the view, select Window > Show view. A menu that displays some of the available views will pop up. If the view you want is not listed, click Other at the bottom of the menu. A dialog box appears that displays all views organized by category. You can enter the name of the view you want to open in the top text box to filter the list of views. In addition, to open this dialog box more easily, click the icon with the + sign in the lower-left corner of the Workbench window to open the same menu as the Select Window > Show View.