Roy Hollinger said
I was kind of expected this book to give lots of detailed information about configuring and using Eclipse. Most of the first seven chapters were useful -- if you were new to using Eclipse as an IDE. However, if you have a few years of Eclipse behind you these chapters are very introduction type.
If you have some time with Eclipse and where looking for a detailed index of all the things that you can set and the best ways to do them then you will be disappointed.
If, like I was, you were buying this and thinking about a companion book on writing plug-ins, you just saved some time. The last two chapters are about extending Eclipse with plug-ins. Both of these chapters take you to the deep end of the pool very quickly but do provide examples. These two chapters show a basic example of a plug-in and a very complex one.
The chapters where they explained SWT (during the general Eclipse information) were very useful. These chapters got my thought process going about how to write different GUI programs and being able to stay away from AWT and SWING.
The chapters on SWT and plug-ins where worth the price. I just wish that there was more expert information about the IDE.
K. Ray said
This book is great. I'm a new eclipse user and relatively new to java and jsp. The short tutorials on tools like JUNIT and ANT were NOT lost on me. This book does a good job in teaching you how to get around in Eclipse 2.x and also good programming practices. You learn the interface while actually developing examples. In stead of a book listing all of the features and how to use them you learn the interface and how to use features in the normal course of programming. I love this book. I bought this shortly before Eclipse 3.0 came out and I was still able to use this book to help me get around in 3.0. Some things were in different places in 3.x, but the functionality was still there. You see online tutorials for the extra features of 3.x. Excellent book I would recommend especially those new to programming.
p.s.
About 40% of the book is related to extending eclipse. I have not read that part of the book and my review has nothing to do with that part of the book.
Martin Brady said
This book was a great blend of information and tutortials on how to do things with Eclipse. The examples I downloaded that accompanied Eclipse all worked and I even setup my own CVS repository to connect it to. This book felt like very little work and shows off Eclipse very well ranging from Ant integration to CVS integration to JUnit integration amongst others. Great book.
Jack D. Herrington said
This is a solid introduction to Eclipse from the user level. It guides you through installing Eclipse, starting your first project, and integrating with source control. There is a small section on writing a plugin, but it's not the emphasis of the book.
O'Reilly's Eclipse books spent about half their time on Eclipse and the other half on plain Java development which was a waste of space. This book spends on chapter on web development, and some of that chapter is spent on use of Eclipse in that context. It's a diversion in both the Manning and O'Reilly books, but the O'Reilly books are far worse.
This is the best introduction to end-user Eclipse that I have read. If you want a book on getting started with Eclipse as a Java development IDE, this is the one.
R Hunter said
I reviewed Eclipse In Action to familiarize myself with the IDE Eclipse. My main focus while reading the book was to learn all I can about developing with Eclipse. I wanted to be able to utilize all the features that Eclipse has to offer, not only in terms of Java developer, but also as a web developer. However, I want to point out that this book is "A Guide for Java Developers". So the target audience is for a Java Developer.
The book starts out with a great introduction into Eclipse and the how the IDE comes together in the workbench. The moves right into the Java development with Eclipse. It wastes no time getting to the meat of development with Junit, Log4j, testing, debugging, and Ant integration. Not to mention a chapter on CVS integration. The book everything that a developer needs during the development life cycle of their project. The authors do a great job in adding additional information on the features that Eclipse has to offer to help alleviate the remedial tasks during development. Many of these features can be used outside of Java development.
Part 2 of Eclipse In Action deals with extending Eclipse and creating Eclipse plugins (the foundation of Eclipse). These chapters give a great novice introduction into Eclipse plugin development; however, there seems to be lacking detail into SWT/JFace and advanced plugin development.
Overall Eclipse In Action provides an indepth look into the Eclipse IDE. I would recommend this book to anyone that want to use Eclipse as their IDE. I have been using Eclipse for over a year now and I use it for all languages I develop with, like Java and PHP. Though the book focuses on the Java Developer, this also lends it way into development with other languages.
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