Getting Started

When you first start working with Eclipse, you might find the user interface somewhat intimidating, with a limited set of options. How do you get started? The Eclipse user interface, or workbench, is based on the concept of a perspective, and you'll first need to understand this concept before you can use Eclipse effectively.

Eclipse builds on this basic concept by allowing multiple arrangements of windows. As you perform different tasks, such as coding, debugging, or merging your code changes with those in a centralized code repository, you can use an arrangement of windows chosen specifically for that task. These task-specific arrangements of windows are called perspectives. In addition to views, each perspective can have different tool buttons and menu selections as appropriate.

The Resource perspective has a tree-oriented window at the top left that lets you navigate and manage resources, called the Navigator. This window, like most windows in Eclipse, is called a view. Initially, there are two other views in the Resource perspective -- an Outline view below the Navigator, and a Task view below the main editor area.

Eclipse distinguishes between views and editors. A perspective can have many views, but it can have only one editor, which is the focal point of the workbench. Generally speaking, if you have a file open in the editor, the other views reflect different aspects of that file. If it's a Java file, and you're in the Java perspective, one view, the Package Explorer, shows where it is physically located in the file and package hierarchy, and another, the Outline view, shows (among other things) the class's methods and attributes. If you have multiple Java files, these views change as you switch between the different files in the editor.

Although it's easy to open new perspectives and switch between them, it isn't generally necessary because as you work, the perspective changes automatically when it's appropriate. (Eclipse politely asks your permission first, of course.) You'll see this in a minute, when we create a Java project, and later, when we debug a Java program. Once you get used to perspectives, you'll probably find that they are a smooth and natural way to work because they eliminate buttons, menus, and views from the UI tool that are not appropriate for the job at hand. This makes it much easier to find the relevant tools.

We will use Eclipse IDE for J2ME development. An outline for acquiring, installing and using Eclipse is listed in the following sections. We will attempt a comparison/short listing of J2ME toolkits soon and choose the one we would want to use.

The Eclipse platform itself is structured as subsystems which are implemented in one or more plug-ins.  The subsystems are built on top of a small runtime engine. The figure below depicts a simplified view.

Workbench

The term Workbench refers to the desktop development environment. The Workbench aims to achieve seamless tool integration and controlled openness by providing a common paradigm for the creation, management, and navigation of workspace resources.

Each Workbench window contains one or more perspectives. Perspectives contain views and editors and control what appears in certain menus and tool bars. More than one Workbench window can exist on the desktop at any given time.

More information on how to work with eclipse can be obtained here.

New projects, folders, and files can be created using several different approaches. In this section resources will be created using three different approaches:

A project can be created using the File menu. Once the project has been created a folder and file can be created as well.

If you're not familiar with Eclipse, you can get more information here.

To install Eclipse, simply extract the contents of the downloaded zip file to your preferred location. (If you use WinZip Classic to extract the zip file, be sure that Use folder names is checked to preserve Eclipse's directory structure.) The installation is completed when Eclipse is run for the first time. The "standard" way to install Eclipse is by extracting the zip to the root of your C: drive, thus having Eclipse's working directory be "C:\eclipse".

Notes: