Java News from Tuesday, April 5, 2005

The Eclipse Project has posted the sixth milestone of Eclipse 3.1, an open source integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. Eclipse also doubles as a base platform for your own applications, an alternative to the AWT and Swing, and a powerful floor wax and dessert topping. The main new features in 3.1 are Ant 1.6.2, quick fixes for serial version IDs, and support for Java 1.5. New SWT features in this milestone include:

• Strike through and underline in StyledText
• Spinner supports decimal values
• Emulated table improvements
• Items in a Tree can be referenced by index.

New IDE features include:

• Single (JAR) file plug-ins
• Better navigation in the preferences, including HTML-like links
• Run and debug Java programs and Ant builds from an editor's context menu (In 3.0 I keep trying that, and keep being surprised when the Run and debug menu items aren't there.)
• Workbench Browser support API

Speaking of Eclipse, I'd like to announce the first iteration of EclipseWorld, an end-user focused Eclipse conference. BZ Media is producing EclipseWorld here in New York City August 29-31 at the Roosevelt Hotel. I've signed on to do four presentations:

• Macifying SWT
• Test Driven Development with Eclipse
• Static Code Analysis with Eclipse
• XML Editing with Eclipse

If you have something interesting to say about subjects Eclipse-related, speaker abstracts are being accepted till April 18.