Open Call: Eclipse
My editor of choice lately has been Eclipse, even though I don’t know anything about Java. The PDT project for PHP development is wonderful for keeping track of variables and functions and classes that my site/application uses, and it has just enough panels that provide information about the projects that I am working on, as well as the attributes for just about every HTML/CSS element.
Coupled with Subclipse for Subversion source control, Eclipse is my one stop shop for all things web development.
My only problem is that I know I haven’t much scratched the surface of what it can do, or how it can help to simplify my workflow. I discovered the plugin library at EasyEclipse, but only experimented with a few of them; the HTML Tidy and webDAV + FTP plugins. I know that there are keywords and shorthand commands that can be entered to cut down on the entry of raw text, but I can’t seem to find a good resource for them.
If you use and love Eclipse, post a comment and share your resources about how it improves your workflow.
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Tim Bailen said,
April 29, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
Hey, just wandered over here from web414.com and noticed that I might have something constructive to add to this post.
It sounds like you might be looking for Eclipse’s “template” functionality. I’ve used it in the Java editor and I imagine the PHP editor supports it, too.
For example, I can type “foreach” and press the autocomplete key-combo (CTRL+SPACE) and Eclipse expands the foreach template in place, saving me lots of typing.
You can define your own templates in Window->Preferences, (search for ‘template’.) The Java settings are in Java/Editor/Templates.