JavaFX Tooling: e(fx)clipse 0.0.5

A new version of the JavaFX tooling for Eclipse is now available. The new release – e(fx)clipse 0.0.5 – is being developed by Tom Schindl and provides an editor based on Eclipse 4.x, and Xtext which offers CSS and JavaFX support.

In the new version CSS compatibility and the JavaFX Packager Support have now been included meaning, for example, the new CSS-compliant gradients syntax can be used. Bugs found in the previous version 0.0.4 have been fixed.

 e(fx)clipse is described in detail in the developer blog. Main developer Tom Schindl gives an overview on the project in the JAXenter-Interview: Eclipse Tooling for JavaFX Project.

e(fx)clipse’s main target is to provide tooling to author JavaFX 2.0 applications using the Eclipse IDE, so that developers currently using Eclipse as their primary IDE do not have to switch to e.g. NetBeans to get tooling support when they want to develop applications using this new UI-Toolkit.

[…]

I don’t want e(fx)clipse to stop on the tooling front but also provide a runtime framework which supports developers writing medium to big modular JavaFX applications.

The idea is to leverage the runtime platform used by Eclipse 4.1 named “Eclipse 4 Application Platform” to provide such a runtime layer. I’ve already shown in proof of concept implementations that the runtime platform used by Eclipse 4.1 can be used by none SWT-UI applications, so technically it is possible.

Tom Schindl