Posts Tagged Eclipse

Free Alternative to Flex Builder

September 26, 2008 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Flex, Tools ·Tagged , , , , ,

It’s been a long time since I last played with Flex. I feel like starting from square one.

This also means that I have a more difficult path ahead of me, with my Flex Builder trial license already expired.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to setup basic mxml auto complete functionality with a plain Eclipse installation with XML support.

First we need to define the .mxml file association in Eclipse (Preferences > General > Editors > File Associations).

Then map this file association to the XML editor (see screenshot below).

Add the Flex 3 schema (flex3.xsd) to Eclipse’s XML catalog.

Try creating a test mxml file and open it from Eclipse.

Test.mxml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">
</mx:Application>

You will most likely receive an Unsupported Type error.

Complete the process by adding the content type definition (shown below).

Close the mxml file and re-open. You should now be able to see the auto-complete functionality in action.

Hope this helps and let me know if you encounter any problems.

If you’re a student or a full time Flex developer, you shouldn’t even bother trying out the outlined steps.

Flex is free for students. But, if you make a living out of developing Flex apps, you might want to consider buying a license.

Related resources:

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An Eclipse Shirt For Me!

August 5, 2008 at 11:29 am · Filed under Java, Tools ·Tagged ,

I got an email this morning (well it arrived last Friday but I read it just today) telling me that I won a free shirt.

Thank you for submitting a review of the Eclipse release to the Ganymede Around the World contest. We have an Eclipse shirt for you! Please send me your:

1) Name

2) Shirt size (men’s small, medium, large, X-large, 2X-large or women’s small, medium, large)

3) Mailing Address

4) Phone Number (Fedex requires this for deliveries)

The contest closed yesterday, so all blog entries have been passed on to a panel of judges and we hope to have the winners of the Eclipse jackets and conference pass announced in a few weeks.

Thank you for participating and best of luck in the contest.

Hope my blog entry gets included for the other freebies!

Thanks Eclipse!

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Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede) – Managing Extension Locations

June 26, 2008 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Programming, Tools ·Tagged , ,

Upon installing Ganymede, I immediately tried looking for the “Manage Configuration” option to install the plugins I have configured in an “Extension Location”. (see Europa screen shots below)

Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration

Add Extension Location

But to my surprise, that option is no longer available in Ganymede! Instead you need to click “Software Updates” menu. Switch to “Available Software” tab, click on the “Add Site” button and choose the “Local” option button to select the directory where you have placed your plugins as an extension location. (see Ganymede screen shots below)

Help > Software Updates

Available Software > Add Site > Local

However, there’s a catch to this approach, instead of running your plugins from the Extension location, Eclipse will copy your plugins to the features and plugins directory of Eclipse (which really defeats the point of having an extension location).

For a cleaner approach (than what was described above), Ganymede now supports “Dropins” (described in this article) which is sort of a hot deploy directory for plugins.

Just make sure your plugins are still compatible with the latest version Eclipse and you should be ready to go.

Now I’m off to explore Eclipse’s latest features...

Recommended books:

0764574701 0321396855 0596100655 0321334612 032142672X

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Content Assist / Code Completion problem with Eclipse and Netbeans

February 27, 2008 at 5:50 pm · Filed under Programming ·Tagged , , , ,

I’ve had the weirdest problem the other day. It was the first time I went back to using our DELL E1405 after being very comfortable with my company issued D620 (which I now had to surrender to my former employer). Everything was working well until I noticed a simple but very annoying problem:

CTRL+SPACE for Eclipse was not working!

I tried playing with the configuration, resetting everything to defaults, removing the plugins one by one. Nothing seemed to work. I tried a fresh copy and even got to the point of installing Netbeans. And guess what, CTRL+SPACE did not work for Netbeans either!

Which lead me to the conclusion that there must be something else causing the problem. I tried killing all the unnecessary processes one by one and got to the bottom of the problem.

It was the Logitech Quickcam v10 application. Unfortunately, I didn’t have internet connection at home which explains why I had to figure out the problem all by myself.

I tried searching the net when I got to the office and saw some posts that v11 of the application already fixes the problem.

What a relief!

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