Eclipse "New and Noteworthy" Template

Last revised June 3, 2003

This is the template for the "New and Noteworthy" document that accompanies each milestone build.

Item title, right justified, in bold, with no trailing punctuation

A blurb pitched to a run-of-the mill user of Eclipse (not to members the Eclipse development team). Think of the Eclipse newsgroup as your readership, and imagine what you write showing up in an "Eclipse Tip of the Day" dialog. Try to generate some excitement; save the boring details for the manual. The description should be complete sentences, with trailing punctuation. Also, make it clear to the reader when a feature is something that's part of the Java IDE (say "Java" somewhere) or only found in PDE (say "PDE"). Stick to the default font and size (which will be Verdana 10pt in the final version).

If a small image sheds light, place it below the description, in a separate paragraph. Screen snapshots should be done on a modern Windows, ideally XP. Crop out any extraneous stuff to focus the reader's attention on your new feature. The image should be no more than 466 pixels wide and in GIF format (not TIF, not BMP, not JPG) with an exact palette (not web) so as to properly capture the gradient shading in the borders. Name the file is a way that is appropriate and specific to the item (e.g., key-bindings.gif, rather than something generic like image.gif).

Here are some examples (taken from the 2.1 M3 build notes):


User customizable key bindings	There is now a preference (Workbench / Key Bindings) for customizing key bindings (one of our high priority items for Eclipse 2.1). Emacs users will find a predefined set of key bindings awaiting them. The implementation is really fresh - expect further improvements and polish.

Improved workspace navigation	Whenever the resource Navigator view is visible, Navigate > Open Resource (CTRL+SHIFT+R) brings up a dialog that allow you to quickly locate and open an editor on any file in the workspace. In the same vein, Navigate > Go To > Resource expands and selects the resource in the Navigator view itself.

Hierarchical view of package structure	There's a new Layout view menu option in the Java Package Explorer which controls whether packages are displayed as a tree (subpackages below packages) instead of a flat list (default).

Default project build order	The algorithm used to compute the default project build order has been improved. Mutually referential projects are clustered together (in no particular order) in an appropriate position relative to other projects that reference them (they used to be relegated to the end of the list).