If you work often with several workspaces, it would be helpful to have the name of the workspace in the title bar. In Eclipse, there is a simple trick to add the name to the title bar. Just start Eclipse with the option -showlocation.

Of course, it only make sense, if you use several workspaces. E.g. one for Java 1.5 projects and another for Java 1.4 projects. Just create a shortcut to Eclipse and define with the option -data the path to the workspace.

If you have a large project, it would be helpful to limit a search to a specific set of classes, e.g. all testclasses or all application sources. In Eclipse, there is the ability of defining working sets. A working set defines a set of classes or files. For example, I defined in my current project 3 working sets. One with all project sources, one with all test sources and one with all application sources. Now, if I use the search (CTRL + H) or the open dialogs of Types (CTRL+SHIFT+T) or Resources (CTRL+SHIFT+R), I can define, in which working set I want to find or open something.

Just try it out:

Or in an open dialog:

Today I’m going to show you two other important shortcuts. Both shortcuts are useful inside a class and offers an inline search.

CTRL + T (t for type), which shows the type hierarchy:

CTRL + O (o for outline), which shows all members:

Putty is a simple SSH client with a simple interface. Sometimes, too simple. I use Putty a lot and have often some concurrent connections. And I really missed a tabbed interface.

Thanks for people, who have the same problems and have the time to solve the problem. Just have a look at the PuTTY Connection Manager. This tiny tool just wrapps around Putty and adds a tabbed interface.

via How-To Geek

Sometimes, it’s very useful to watch the source code of a class file. But for this comfort, it’s necessary to download the source files and attach them in Eclipse. With the most important libraries, it make sense to spend time with downloading sources. But not with all rarely used libraries. A simple solution is the use of JadClipse. JadClipse decompiles class files with the help of the Jad Decompiler on the fly. There is no need for any source any more (of course, there are the usual limitations with decompilation).

Just download it and install it like described on the homepage (you also need to download the Jad Decompiler executable from the Jad website).

Before:

After:

If you want to learn some shortcuts for a program, the best way is to do this step by step. Also in Eclipse. Today I will show you two important shortcuts, which are useful in very large projects:

use CTRL + SHIFT + T (T like Type) to search a class, interface, and so on. This search supports CamelCase. If a class is called ThisIsMyTestClass, typing of the capital letters also finds this class (just type TIMTC).

use CTRL + SHIFT + R (R like Resource) to search a ANT build file, text files, ore something like that:

I got into a situation, in which I had the content of a large XML file in my clipboard. Unfortunately, the whole file didn’t had any breaks, they were all printed as \r\n.

But with Programmer’s Notepad 2 there is a simple solution. In the replace dialog, just enable the option “Allow backslash expression” in the Replace dialog and replace all \r\n in the text with “real” \r\n, which appear as breaks in the text.

In some cases, ANT has it’s limitations. For example, it is not really easy to create an if-else structure or a for-loop. For this reason, a few people started long time ago the Ant-Contrib project. Just download it and put the jar file in the lib folder of the project. Then, just at following line to the build file:

<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties"></taskdef>

Now, you can start using constructs like if, foreach and combine these tasks with usual ANT tasks. Here a little example:

with antcontrib:

<target name="theultimateconditionmachine">
  <if>
    <equals arg1="${foo}" arg2="bar" />
    <then>
      <echo message="property foo is bar" />
    </then>
    <else>
      <echo message="property foo is not bar" />
    </else>
  </if>
</target>

without antcontrib:
if you want to perform the same task with ant, you need to create 4 (!) ant targets:

<target name="noway">
  <antcall target="conditionIf"/>
  <antcall target="conditionElse"/>
</target>
 
<target name="conditionDef">
  <condition property="conditionIsTrue">
    <equals arg1="${foo}" arg2="bar"/>
  </condition>
</target>
 
<target name="conditionIf" depends="conditionDef" if="conditionIsTrue">
  <echo message="property foo is bar"/>
</target>
 
<target name="conditionElse" depends="conditionDef" unless="conditionIsTrue">
  <echo message="property foo is not bar"/>
</target>