Eclipse SDK

As I mentioned in Chapter 8, "The Eclipse Phenomenon!" the Eclipse platform is growing at a marvelous pace! So there is certainly a lot to check out in this area. For example, new or enhanced plug-ins are being introduced literally every week from various sources. Be sure to visit the eclipse.org website often and also visit the various plug-in directories if you are looking for specific plug-ins.

As for the core Eclipse SDK platform (including the bundled Java Development Tools), here are some suggestions on what to investigate next:

• Code style formatting This feature in Eclipse provides extensive customization for the way you like your code formatted. This option is available from the Windows, Preferences menu item.

• Tips and tricks Be sure to view the online help for the various plug-ins (for example, JDT). You will find a long list of tips and tricks in here that can save you some time and enhance your user experience when working in Eclipse.

• Refactoring support Eclipse's refactoring is already robust but it is likely to continue improving. Also, these refactoring techniques are based on some of the concepts available on refactoring.com, which has a growing catalog of refactoring techniques, so Eclipse is bound to increase its support for some of the newer refactoring methods.

Writing Eclipse plug-ins isn't exactly rocket science, so you might want to investigate this option. Custom plug-ins do not have to be for technical or development needs only. I personally know of a project related to computer forensics that was developed using the Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and deployed as Eclipse plug-ins.