In late June of this year, the latest release of the Eclipse Platform, version 3.1, will be available for download from eclipse.org. Read more here.
What’s New in Eclipse 3.1
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The good –
It doesn’t use Swing
It can be compiled down to native via GCJ
Has decent multi-language plugins
A good framework
Large industry support
Vi plugin – yep, yep
The bad –
The interface isn’t all that great
The Java project is just plain bizarre
At least on linux, it’s actually slower than Swing based apps (but looks better)
In any case, its good to see that ant project import/export has been addressed
Well, Swing has not failed. it is still a very powerful, and posibly the most customizable multi platform GUI library. true that it is challenging for newbies, and might have a steep learning curve for making really good looking applications..
i will not enter SWT-Swing fights, but recently i saw very good applications designed with both swing and SWT.
For an example of swing’s customization capabilities, check this
http://www.clientjava.com/blog/2005/06/14/1118763929450.html
or a full blown mail client,
http://columba.sourceforge.net/
and future of Netbeans gui designer Matisse:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roumen/?anchor=new_gui_builder_dem…
Swing is far from dead, on the contrary gaining momentum.
there are much less, but kick ass SWT applications available too, recetly i saw this:
http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/hannoverscreenshots.html
It’s not that the API has failed, it’s the damn implementation. They failed when they didn’t go with the OTI solution. They didn’t have to paint everything themselves – and now are realizing that.
Oh, and don’t get me started on Metal as still being the default in Mustang.
<<At least on linux, it’s actually slower than Swing based apps (but looks better)>>
No way! Try Eclipse 3.1RC2, starts up in less than 10sec on this old AMD-2200+/512MB rig.
Or how about RSSOwl. So bloody fast!
http://www.rssowl.org/
This is on Linux/GTK+ by the way which *was* nortoriously slow compared to Win32 until recently.
I’m asking because I just switched from Eclipse 3 to Netbeans and if it’s coming out this month, I maj just switch back.
I guess if you have already switched, you don’t value quick fixes and advanced refactorings so much… it really depends on what you’re looking for. I’m sticking with eclipse because I work a lot on pure java code (no jsp/jsf) on big projects and fast refactoring, quick fixes and, generally speaking, a damn good editor is key to me. If you’re working on other areas, you may appreciate the more complete web layer support offered by Eclipse, or the form editor (provided that everyone in your team uses Netbeans, of couse, otherwise it’s not very useful).
…To turn into a Swing vs SWT war.
But is GUI performance on Mac and Linux now up to par, e.g. as fast as on Windows?
No, it still is GTK2 speed on Linux and slow as molasses on Mac.
The funny thing is, that Swing nowadays performs better than GTK2 on Linux. Ditto for the Mac, the UI Speed of Netbeans 4.1 is twice as fast as Eclipse on the Mac.
What we probably would need for those platforms is an SWT Swing port to get speed.
The funny thing is, that Swing nowadays performs better than GTK2 on Linux. Ditto for the Mac, the UI Speed of Netbeans 4.1 is twice as fast as Eclipse on the Mac.
What we probably would need for those platforms is an SWT Swing port to get speed.
It’s funny how having a bad theme and no anti-aliased fonts will speed things up. Don’t compare apples to oranges.
are there a eclipse release who use swing?
i would like to compare it with swt release
Eclipse is faster …
but Intellij IDEA is still faster, and also better. It’s allmost a proof that swing can also be fast.
But I don’t want to start a flame now between eclipse and idea, because I like opensource, and I hope eclipse will be able to catch up quickly:). It’s sad that eclipse won’t use QT. Why ? I thought eclipse is under GPL. Why don’t they (IBM) want to also develop a QT-gui ?
It’s amazing how quickly you trolls can turn a harmless story about the next eclipse version into a swing vs swt war.
check the video
very amazing
informatino
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/articles/matisse.html
video
http://www.netbeans.org/files/documents/4/497/matisse.zip
if what you want is compare performance of the GUI part only or look and feel, download metamorphosis’ Fakeclipse from the jgoodies demo. That could help.
JNN (Swing based RSS reader: http://jnn.dev.java.net ) is way faster and way nicer looking than RSSOwl (SWT based) on my mac.