Downloading and Installing Eclipse

Downloading and Installing Eclipse

At work, I use Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers. Each version of Eclipse IDE has a name. At the time of this writing, the current version is called Helios. In Windows OS, my first download window looks as shown in Figure  (note jee in the file name).

 The installation of Eclipse IDE comes down to a simple unzipping of the downloaded file into a disk drive of your choice. You’ll find the file eclipse.exe in the Eclipse folder — just run this program. You’ll immediately see a pop-up window asking you to select a workspace, which is a directory on your hard disk where one or more of your projects is going to be stored.If you want to create an application in Eclipse, you start with creating a project. In the real world, the source code of a decent-size application can consist of several Eclipse projects.For this book I selected the following workspace directory: c:\PracticalJava\workspace.Eclipse Java EE IDE starts with a Welcome panel — just close it by clicking the little x on theWelcome tab. Figure  is a snapshot of the freshly installed IDE with an empty workspace.

To be precise, you are looking at Java EE perspective (note the Java EE tab at the top), which is a

collection of views. On the left you see a Project Explorer view. The area in the middle is reserved

for the code editor view — you start using it as soon as you create your first Java class. The Outline

view is on the right — you’ll see the names of your classes, methods, and variables there when they are available.

There are many other views that you can open and close by yourself by selecting Window ➪ Show

View. These include Console, Search, Servers and others.

Since you are just starting to learn the language, there is no need to work in the Java EE perspective

— you can get by in the Java perspective. Click the little icon with the plus sign by the Java EE tab and select “Java perspective.” You’ll see a slightly different set of views with the Package Explorer and Hierarchy views on the left, Task List on the right, and Problems, Javadoc and Declaration tabs at the bottom.