CFEclipse Article On IBM developerWorks

Mark, thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try after my current project.

In Eclipse I use two keys a lot of the time, Ctrl + Shift + R , and start typing the name of the file, this will show me all the files in my project that start with it, until it finds it, then I just click return (no need to know which folder it is in ) If I already have the file open (I have been known to have about 120 files open at the end of the week) I just click Ctrl + E and it does the same thing. MUCH faster than doing "file -> open" or even looking for a file in a project listing, and I am not even talking about how much faster that is compared to looking for it using windows explorer. (hey, I actually use OS X's Finder, but there you go!) HTH MD

Mark, that completely make sense. I'll try start using it in the future. *I usuall leave the folder open, and switch to the folder and open up the file. Compared to some ide's, each time i try to browse a file, it takes me back to eiterh C drive or desktop, which is annoying. But thank you for clearing things Mark, i like eclipse features, and i'll try to use it too.

Syed You are right, Eclipse is not an Editor per-se, so you dont just open up any old file from Windows Explorer and edit it (the same with lots of other IDE's such a IDEA and NetBeans). It is project based, so that feature is not there, and there are requirements for it being ask. Once you go down the project route a lot of good things will come from it. i.e. you will actually be able to integrate to SVN right out of the box. With regards to the VSS plugin, I have used it in the past and it seemed to work, it was just a wrapper for the underlying VSS command line functions, since VSS is closed source it couldn't be TOTALLY replicated in Java. with regards to it being time consuming? Well, I completely dis-agree, I find and open up files in about 2 seconds from the IDE compared to browsing through folders. but if you want to waste your day doing that, go for it. MD

Syed, we'll need one of the Eclipse gurus to weigh in here. You can open a file in Eclipse without a project being open. But yes, I have also run into opening a file from Windows Explorer and Eclipse opens by the file is not opened. --- Ben

Ben, one quick question, i downloaded eclipse like last week, but when i try to open a file from my windows explorer, eclipse doesnt open up the file. I read somewhere that eclipse does not have the feature of doing that since it uses projects. Is that right? I tried same thing my VSS (source safe), again, it didnt open my files. I tried researching, i found the plugin for VSS, but someone told me not to use it, because it messes up the code once in a while. I think it would be time consuming to use eclipse if it does not have ability to open up files from explorer. Please correct me if i'm wrong. Syed