Eclipse IDE

Key takeaways:

Do you want to see a Chromium based SWT Browser implementation? Please donate (or reach out to me if you want to do corporate donations) and the Eclipse Foundation will make it happens via the Friends of Eclipse Enhancement Program (FEEP).

Browser support in SWT has always been a complicated story. By default (meaning without any hint from the application developers and the users), SWT relies on “native” renderers (Internet Explorer on Windows, WebKit on macOS and WebKitGTK+ or Mozilla/XULRunner on Linux). While supporting different rendering of pages in the Web is common, it’s annoying when you develop a desktop application where the Browser component is used to render things that Web technologies can do better than SWT (CSS, SVG, WebGL, etc.). Not only that, but you would expect high performance from the renderer for such usage.

The Eclipse Foundation is actively seeking bids on 10 new FEEP Development Efforts, along with 5 outstanding Development Efforts that have not yet been bid. The objective is to have this work completed in the 1st quarter of 2017.

You remember the Friends of Eclipse Enhancement Program, right? It is a program that utilizes all the donations made through the Friends of Eclipse program to make significant and meaningful improvements and enhancements to the Eclipse IDE/Platform. I think it is a good time for me to provide you with an update about what we have done in the last quarter with this program.

FEEP does sound like a bird call, but it stands for Friend of Eclipse Enhancement Program. Yes, it is a mouthful. You may wonder what it stand for… Well, let me tell you!

Two weeks ago I was in Paris for Devoxx France 2016 where I’ve presented what’s new in the upcoming Eclipse release (aka Neon — to be released in June). During the talk, I’ve been asked if Eclipse will eventually cancel a background task (a job in the Eclipse terminology) when it is asked for. Who never fulminate against a progress bar stating that cancel has been requested and that the task does not finish quickly?