I’m done with MyEclipse. I never really was that impressed with it in the first place. I needed a JSP editor and didn’t have time to evaluate the other options (what are they anyways???) so I downloaded it and paid my fee.
After using it for 3 months I’ve made my decision MyEclipse is not the option I was looking for. There were a number of things I didn’t like. Here are a couple bothersome items.
1. Why the heck do they install a Program Group to my Start Menu? What is that all about? Is it the MyEclipse App in my Start Menu different then the Eclipse I already installed and already have a shortcut/Program Group for?
2. Why does opening a JSP cause the JSP designer to launch in the background? It makes opening and editing a file SO SLOW! To be honest this “feature” was the deal-breaker. I just don’t understand the logic. WARNING… RANT COMING… Slow me down while loading the JSP designer and then don’t even launch in the designer mode. Why launch it in the first place? Just open the JSP editor and give me an option to launch the designer if I want to AND want the performance hit. It made me crazy. I would need to open a JSP for a quick change and I’d have to sit and wait a second.
Anyhow, I guess I’ll be looking at the other options out there. I saw a couple presenters at NFJS this past weekend using the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP). I’ll go check it out.
1. To get rid of the icon you don’t like, highlight it, and press the delete key. You will see a dialog box asking if you really want to delete it. Click Yes.
2. It is only slow the first time you load a JSP after you start Eclipse. Every other JSP load is quick. If you only have one JSP in your app, maybe this isn’t the tool for you.
For $30, I think it is a great tool. For $30 it isn’t worth the time to look for something better in my opinion…
10 out of the 11 presenters I saw at No Fluff use Intellij… Take it for what it’s worth.
Hey x,
You’re a smart ass.
I know how to delete a friggin’ icon and my app has 278 JSPs. Thanks for the help.
Scott… I asked those 10 presenters at NFJS and they said they were only using Intellij at the conf b/c Jay told them too, but they really prefer Eclipse. 🙂
Erik
Erik, I too was curious why so many would be using IntelliJ. It just didn’t seem right. Thanks for checking. btw, Eclipse with WTP 0.71 is pretty nice.
Indeed, using the MyEclipse only for the Jsp editor is like using a bazooka to shoot a fly.
And no one can deny that myeclipse is really slow overall.
But as far as I am concerned, the benefits of MyEclipse are really worse slow loading:
– integration of all the appserver I must suport inside eclipse, Resin2/3, Tomcat4/5, WebSphere 5 and Weblogic 8. For launching, debuging, jsp debuging, hot-code replace, this is a real gain
– CSS and JS editor (really nice code completion, when you are not a designer or a javascript coder like me, reallty nice)
– JSP editor (debugging, syntax highliting and code completion)
What I ended up doing to keep those benefits above the inconvenients is disabling some features:
– project validation, there are many aspect of it DTD/HTML/JSP/XML (disabled the one you don’t need)
– In the JSP editor: disabled “Analyze annotations while typing”, show “quick fixables”, and disabled hover which were causing some slow when moving the mouse around.
PS: the word spe-cia-list is not allowed by your blog, really annoyiing!!!
The “designer” thing drove me nuts with the jsp editor, too. If you go to the general prefences in Eclipse you can change the default editor to be “JSP Classic”, meaning none of the designer stuff that slows everything down.
Webtools is really not much better and has some very annoying issues, I’ve used both quite a bit.
You should really check out NetBeans 5 Beta. NB5 blows Eclipse out of the water when it comes to server-side development. Actually, its better at Swing/client-side development also now. It’s also free and open source.
Mo,
No disrespect, but NetBeans isn’t an option. Right now I don’t have time to learn a new IDE. It’s a lame excuse, but I’ve got some deadlines I’m working with.
I’ll make a point to check it out later this year.
Erik
I have been happy with Amateras, and have mixed in the latest from the Web Tools but have not been so happy with the Web Tools. I would say to give it a try and download the plugins they are simple enough to use and if you don’t like them they are easy enough to disable and delete. http://amateras.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/fswiki_en/wiki.cgi
Erik,
Re: Rant 1 – the program group
The installer has a configuration page where *you* get to decide if any shortcuts or program groups are installed, just like all the other platform installers out there. The default is to install an alias in a program group, bug *you* could’ve easily selected “None”. You simply didn’t. And yes, the shortcut it installes *is* different since it configures Eclipse to run properly with large workspaces. If you notice the shortcut arguments it sets up Eclipse to run with:
eclipse.exe -vmargs -Duser.language=en -Xms128M -Xmx512M -XX:PermSize=64M -XX:MaxPermSize=128M
So in my opinion this adds a lot of value since I didn’t have to figure out how to launch Eclipse so it worked with a large workspace, which I have.
Re Rant 2: OK so you don’t like visual design tools. I do and use them all the time, but to each his own. As others have pointed out: the load time of the editor on first usage is longer than on subsequent ones because Eclipse lazily loads plugins as requested. If you don’t use the design tools, use the ‘Classic JSP’ editor as your default. MyEclipse supports either model; you get to pick. Problem solved.
This is really one of those classic blog posts where the blogger only proves that they can type faster than they can think. Advice: Ask questions first and know of what you speak before ranting IN public.
Erik,
just a comment about Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) – JSP Editor pags my CPU to 100% and keeps it there. About a month ago I downloaded latest version and it still does the same thing in Eclipse 3.1.1. That being said, there are MANY very nice features in WTP such as XML editor is improved and Database Explorer is a great tool if you don’t want to install a database tool. I use it to work with DB2 as there are no good free DB2 query tools.
Hey Tom,
Thanks for the tip. I’ll take a look at Amateras next Monday as soon as I get back from my vaction I’m going on tomorrow. 🙂
Erik
Dan,
You win on both points, but let me add. A few points.
1. As I stated in my post, I didn’t have time to evaluate other options. I also didn’t have time to learn what the option I *did* choose had to offer. I needed a JSP editor and I needed one ASAP.
2. I saw the “wasted time” each time I opened a JSP. I’m guessing the time improvement is on the subsequent openings of the *same* JSP file. I’ll look into this further.
3. My opinion is that the default action would be to use the “classic” JSP editor. It’s faster.
I’m about to wrap a project and will have time to give MyEclipse a fair shot and will do so.
Erik
Erik,
Re 1: I understand how that can happen. Sometimes things just have to get done, and right now. However, I’ll point out that unlike any other product I’ve used the MyEclipse support guys are really responsive. Just post to their forums and they’ll answer whatever you want.
Re 2: Yeah, it really does speed up for subsequent opens. It’s still slower than the “source only” mode, but not a ton.
Re 3: Well, that’s really a judgement call as to which should be the default. Personally, I like the full designer as I will sometimes use just source and sometimes use the splitscreen view to see how what I’m doing will really look. Still, the default has to be something so I don’t fault MyEclipse for making that something their most full-featured editor. At least they left the old editor in so you can pick though.
>I’m about to wrap a project and will
>have time to give MyEclipse a fair shot
>and will do so.
That’s cool. Just use their support for any questions to get you over the learning curve and I think you’ll like it pretty well. There’s just a *lot* there to learn. Personally, my dev team (about 20) has been really pleased with it over the last year, but it took a little time to get up to speed.
I believe that the JSP “source” editor that MyEclipse uses they got from the original webtools contribution. So switching to WTP jsp editor will not improve JSP editor experience that much.
But, as WTP1.0 release nears, its JSP editor will likely have more fixes/enhancements than the one MyEclipse is currently using. This question was recently asked in their forums and they said that MyEclipse 5.0 is going to based on WTP1.0/1.5.
Thats another reason that I use MyEclipse is they will always stay on top of whatever good opensource that comes out of WTP, DTP, BIRT and extend/enhance it(read: bugfix). Oh yeah, and their next version 4.1 is going to have AJAX support with Javascript debugging!
Eric, I totally agree with you. The JSP editor in MyEclipse is full of bugs. It’s got tons of strange behaviours that drive me crazy. Like randomly positioning the cursor in a different place when you’re typing, highlighting an entire block at will, and lots of others.
I don’t think that editor should be on the streets for sale.