Eclipse

If you didn't know Eclipse 3.3 is already in progress and you can grab the latest milestone release M4 here.

The release is code named as Europa and you can find all the new and noteworthy features here :)

One of the complaints with Eclipse has been the slow startup. There seems to be a major improvement in performance in terms of startup and UI responsiveness.

EclEmma is a free Java code coverage tool for Eclipse and is based on EMMA code coverage tool.

Features

Fast develop/test cycle: Launches from within the workbench like JUnit test runs can directly be analyzed for code coverage. Rich coverage analysis: Coverage results are immediately summarized and highlighted in the Java source code editors. Non-invasive: EclEmma does not require modifying your projects or performing any other setup.

Once the plugin is installed, it adds a new launch mode called as Coverage Mode

After the application terminates, EclEmma shows code coverage data in the "Coverage Overview" view

Other than this, EclEmma highlights the code in the source

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Eclipse.org, the official site of Eclipse had a "look and feel" upgrade yesterday. Unlike the Eclipse platform, the site was not so usable, it was always a pain searching for information in the website. I still have to explore the new interface and see whether they have improved on these aspects.

From what I observed after 5 minutes of browsing Eclipse.org is that its only the home page had an upgrade, the home pages of different projects like WTP,DTP etc still haven't changed :(.

I strongly believe that Eclipse should seriously bring in some uniformity in the website. They should seriously start a project just for this ! ( I remember

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During the summer holidays whenever I used to visit my grandparents house, one thing I always used to do was read comics. There was a huge collection over  there and I somehow managed to finish reading most of it during my stay there. And during my next visit, I used to again start reading it, thought it was a repetition.

Some of my favorites were Phantom, Mandrake, Asterix and Obelix, Tintin ! Not to forget the Tinkle's and the Chacha Choudhary. There were a few more of them which I am not able to recollect (Gosh It was 15 years back :D )

Now you can find most of the comic strips

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One of my colleague introduced me to Openlaszlo today and I should say I was amazed by what all you can do using Laszlo.

This is what the Laszlo has to say about OpenLaszlo :

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software.

OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and soon DHTML. The OpenLaszlo API's provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication, and declarative UI. An OpenLaszlo application can be as short as a single source file, or factored into multiple files that define reusable classes and libraries.

OpenLaszlo is

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I have been using the FeedDemon RSS Reader from the past 29 days and the trial version will expire in a day. I am definitely not going to shell out 30$ for the full version. The reader has all the features that I need, but there is nothing special in it, for me to buy it.

So I went on a hunt of finding a free desktop based RSS reader. Before trying out FeedDemon, I had tried these applications/RSS readers.

1. Firefox Live Bookmarks - Easy to add the feed, but doesn't it bloat your toolbar or what ?

2. Sage RSS Reader - Sage is a lightweight RSS

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Eclipse as of today is the industry's major non-Microsoft software tool platform. The number of companies adopting this platform is a testimonial of the platform's success. (Check my previous post for more on the history of Eclipse IDE) Eclipse has a well-designed, and extensible architecture. What is valuable about Eclipse is that it provides an open source platform for creating an extensible integrated development environment. This platform allows anyone to build tools that integrate seamlessly with the environment and other tools. The key to the seamless integration of tools with Eclipse is the plug-in. With the exception of a small run-time kernel, everything in Eclipse is a plug-in. This means that a plug-in you develop integrates with Eclipse in exactly ...

In the late 1990s, IBM began development of what we now know as Eclipse. In the mid-1990s, a number of powerful commercial development environments were available; Microsoft Visual Studio was becoming a more general-purpose tools platform. A number of Java-based IDEs were also coming into play, including Symantec's Visual Café, Borland's JBuilder, IBM's Visual Age for Java, and others. Primary Goal The platform began development by Object Technology International in 1998 (a subsidiary of IBM purchased in 1996, now known as the IBM Ottawa Lab) to address the problems raised by customers that dealt with the cohesiveness of IBM software tooling. Customers complained that IBM's tooling looked like it came from different companies and didn't work together. IBM wanted to establish a common platform for all their development products to avoid duplicating the most common elements of infrastructure. This would allow customers using multiple tools built by different parts of IBM to have a more integrated experience as they switched from one tool to another Beginning of the phenomenon In November 1998, the OTI team was given the go ahead because they had experience building several generations of IDEs. Also, another IBM team was going to build the first product on this new platform.