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This document describes the installation of the Visual Editor (VE) for Eclipse .
The
Visual Editor allows the design of a GUI (Graphic-User-Interface) by
drag and drop of elements. Thereafter it generates Java-code for
displaying this User-Interface as part of a
Java-program.
Additionally the VE has reverse-engineering
capabilities; i.e. it can take the Java-code that displays a GUI and
allow the graphic edit of this code.
Credits:
There
are a lot of highly sophisticated articles about this topic.
It
took me a while to get to this simple installation instruction:
http://www.eclipse.org/vep/WebContent/faq.html#install
.
Thanks to the unknown author(s) !
After
all that, I was able to restrict this tutorial to a few screencopies
with a minimum of descriptional text.
Operating-system installed ;-).
Logged on as user, who will use Eclipse as an IDE; in our example called developer01.
Eclipse (Version 3.1) installed, started and ended at least once.
Further prerequisites will be chosen during the download process.
Installation-instructions:
The
installation-process is done over the Eclipse-update-function
:
Select
>Help>Software
Updates>Find and Install... .
In
the Install/Update window select (o)
Search for new features to install and press the [Next
>] button thereafter.
In
the Install window check Eclipse.org
update site and press the [Finish] button
thereafter.
In
the Update Site Mirrors window choose a close-by location and
press the [ OK ] button thereafter.
After
a few moments of serching
the
Update window shows the Search Results.
If the tree does
not already show the detail-packages, expand the tree-view by
clicking onto the little triangle on the left.
Check EMF,
GEF and VE
The
EMF (Eclipse Modelling Framework) and GEF (Graphic
Environment Framework) are prerequisites for the VE (Visual
Editor) and are downloaded and installed in the same go.and
press the [Next >] button.
Thereafter,
a window with the license terms shows up. Accept the terms and
continue by clicking
the
[Next >] button.
Before
it is time for a coffee-break, all parts to be downloaded are shown
again. After clicking
the
[Finish] button the download really starts !
Depending
on the speed of the internet-connection the download takes a while.
During the download a progress-bar is displayed:
Occassionally
there might be a Warning, that a unsigned feature is to be
installed.
Ignore this warning by clicking the [ Install All
] button.
Finally,
the request to restart the Eclipse workbench is shown. Click the [
Yes ] button as the best response.
After
starting Eclipse, select >File>New>Other
In
the window thereafter you see a folder 'Java' with a template-file
for 'Visual Class' and and subfolders 'AWT' and 'Swing'.