My Eclipse 5.5 New and Noteworthy Features

What was New and Noteworthy in our previous releases?       5.1.1GA

5.5 Feature Highlights    [Page 1, 2, 3, 4]

The MyEclipse 5.5 release includes enhancements and bug fixes for the MyEclipse environment over the previous 5.1.1 GA release, including noteable feature additions for the below functionalities or platforms. Please see the main page (page 1) for a full list of features.

On this page:
JSF 1.2 support along with JEE5  The JSF Capabilities wizard now allow you to add JSF 1.2 support to the JEE5 web project and only a JEE5 web project.  If you are adding JSF support to a J2EE 1.4 project, only JSF 1.1 implementations will be allowed.
Enhanced JSF EL Code-Assist Both the new JSF Designer and the older JSP Designer both have new enhanced Code-assist and validation of EL contexts.  One specific new feature is that row variables (var="") in a dataTable are now validated and the Designer provides Code-Assist for EL variables.

Example of how dataTable variables (var="") is now both validated and Code-Assist is provided.
JSF Application Configuration Validator The MyEclipse JSF application validator was updated with more checks to your JSF configuration.
New Visual JSF Designer (Supports All Eclipse Platforms, including Mac OSX) In MyEclipse 5.5, a brand new Visual JSF Designer was added specifically to support advanced JSF WYSIWYG development.  The new designer is well suited to Drag-n-Drop component design of JSF pages.  Currently, it supports JSF HTML and Core, JSP, and JSTL tag rendering in design view.  More design time support for 3rd party tag libraries are planned in the near future. 

For JSP files that are JSF centric the new JSF Designer will open automatically on these files.  For any other JSP you can open it using the open-with context menu.   All other JSPs will be opened with the standard Visual JSP Designer from previous versions of MyEclipse.



The new JSF designer provides better Drag-n-Drop manipulation of JSF components.  In the design view, feedback is given as to where you will be dropping a component that is currently being dragged.



The new JSF designer provides far superior support for complex JSF component rendering like panelGrid, panelGroup and dataTable than our previous JSP Designer.




JSF Designer Taglib support in Design view The new JSF designer will automatically add taglibs that are available on your MyEclipse project build path.  Any new tag-libraries you add to your project will be available to you for designing with the next time you open the JSF Designer. 



If you drop a Taglib component onto a page that doesn't not include the taglib import, one will be automatically added when you drop.

Facelets Project Support For existing JSF Projects, add Facelets support by using "Add JSF Facelets capabilities..." wizard.




You can also add Facelets support directly when you are creating a new JSF project.
Use XHTML Wizard to create Facelets pages To create a new Facelets page, start the new XHTML File wizard from MyEclipse folder and in the XHTML Wizard there is a new dropdown available for creating a Facelets XHTML page.
JSF Designer now supports Facelets
 The MyEclipse Visual JSF Designer will now support visually editing Facelets XHTML pages.  Below you can see opening a Facelets XHTML page.  And below that notice that JSF/Facelets components are supported.
Code-Assist and Validation for Facelets

Code-Assist is now available for Facelets, JSF, JSTL taglibs and also all associated tag attributes for XHTML pages in Facelets enabled projects.

Code-assist is also available for JSF variables in Facelets pages.

Both TagLib and JSF Variable validation is also available for Facelets pages.


 
XHTML Support
 New XHTML file wizards added to MyEclipse


Visual XHTML Designer support was added


The Visual JSP and HTML Designers were updated to support XML syntax
ASP and PHP Support
 Visual ASP/PHP Designer was introduced which allows WYSIWYG editing of the ASP and PHP page layouts
Improved UI Layout The Visual Web Designer has a new streamlined layout simplifies operations to only 2 modes of operation: Design and Preview. 


The Design mode includes a split screen containing a WYSIWYG design panel and HTML/JSP Source editor panel.




The Preview mode is a split screen with simultaneous preview of the web document in IE and Mozilla.

 
Smart Split Screen Management The improved split screen has custom actions available on the vertical sash bar.  These actions allow you to quickly maximize or minimize either the WYSIWYG or Source Views.  All sash settings are remembered between editor sessions.




Restoring the previous layout is possible from an action on the custom sash.




MyEclipse 5.5 New & Noteworthy
[Page 1, 2, 3, 4]

MyEclipse Innovations

The innovation and application of Eclipse technology is Genuitec's sole business. With well over 2 million downloads, MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench (now with Web Services support) has grown to be the most popular and successful Eclipse-based JEE IDE. Our history of blending the best of open source with commercial-grade developed tools has created a long chain of Eclipse technology innovation that includes: