The Highlander Blog » eclipse

Using Processing with Eclipse

Alex — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:57:36 +0000

Recently I blogged about how I was going to start to use Processing. Since then I have realised that the Processing application is way too basic for me. Using Eclipse or Flash Builder much of the time I naturally looked to see if there was a way of bringing in Processing to the Eclipse environment, and very quickly I found the following link: http://www.creativecoding.org/en/beyond/p5/eclipse_as_editor (link no longer active)

Since Processing uses Java, I decided to download the standard Eclipse package. Following the instructions from the link above I quickly got a simple applet working. However I came across a couple of minor issues. Now I used to use Java, but many years ago, so I was quite rusty regarding the Java language, but when I create a simple applet, I immediately got this error…

The serializable class Table2 does not declare a static final serialVersionUID field of type long Table2.java /Table2/src line 4 Java Problem

Now, for me, who does loads of actionscript, the above message is meaningless. However, right-mouse clicking on the warning symbol and choosing Quick Fix gave a list of options…

Quick fix in Eclipse

… I chose the Add suppress warnings options and the following line was added…

@SuppressWarnings(“serial”)

The warning has now gone, and my applet runs.

I have no idea what the warning refers to, and I am sure that when I last did Java I never came across this, but hey! it works.

I will go through the little applet that I created soon, just to show you how to create a Processing applet within Eclipse, but the difference between using Eclipse and the actual Processing application is that the latter does all the work for you in creating a runnable Java applet, whilst with Eclipse you have to add the extra functions to make it a proper Java applet structure.

However, I personally prefer using Eclipse as I will get all the extra functionality that I need (Flash Builder plugin, other plugins, etc). Using the Processing application is just something I refuse to do – it is way too basic for me.

— alex

Changing the default font and colours in Flash Builder

Alex — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:10:21 +0000

Whilst I love Flash Builder, it is somewhat daunting navigating the large amount of preferences. So, if you wish to change the font, size, and colour of your editing window here is where you go…

Window > Preferences > General > Appearance > Colours & Fonts > Basic > Text Font

For the background colour and stuff like that you go to …

Window > Preferences > General > (and click on the text) Text Editors

At the bottom of the panel you will now Foreground colour, Background colour etc.

One to be aware of – Flash Builder/Eclipse has a somewhat non-standard interface compared to most apps that run on a mac (or a pc for that matter). For example, the Preferences in the Window menu has no ellipsis (…) which is used to indicate that a dialog will appear.

Also, you can click on a Preference title (like Text Editors) and you will see choices, as well as clicking on all the options below a title. So it can be confusing as to where things are and how to access them.

Anyway, enjoy.

Useful extras for extending Flash Builder (and Eclipse)

Alex — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:03:16 +0000

Here are some of the plugins that I always install when using Flash Builder. Let me know what you think, and let me know what other plugins you recommend.

quantumDB – (quantum.sourceforge.net) – this will give you access to your MySQL database from within Flash Builder. Very useful to check what is going on and also to check if your SQL commands return what you think.

phpeclipse (www.phpeclipse.com) – this will install a php editor and internal web browser, so you now do all your php editing from within Flash Builder.

flash snippets panel – (theflashblog.com/?p=1494) – this is very new and is still in alpha, but it works brilliantly so far. Check out Lee Brimelow’s blog for future updates to this. Highly recommended.

subclipse – (subclipse.tigris.org) – this is a very good implementation of svn for FlashBuilder. Highly recommended. It is very easy to add your svn address and then check out the latest version. You can then create a new project from that trunk.