Let's Go Open Source: Eclipse IDE

All Programmers have heard of dreamweaver I'm sure. However, for budget programmers like me, I prefer to go the open source way. The tools I use for designing web pages, from Graphics to the coding are all open source software.

In the first Let's G.O.S. feature in this site, the software here which has been an integral part of my programming toolkit: the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The Eclipse SDK (Software Development Kit) is the core of the IDEs. It features a framework which allows for IDEs to run. It is an open source and software independent framework. As such, you can run eclipse in most operating systems.

The Eclipse SDK comes with the Java IDE. However, it aims to be more than a Java IDE. It aims to be part of the entire software development cycle.

Eclipse has a large community of users, constantly extending the covered application areas. It is focused on building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle.

However, since my work is web-oriented, my IDE of choice is the PHP-IDE. Here is a screenshot of the Eclipse IDE:



There are various plugins and gems which can be found at the Eclipse Foundation website at http://www.eclipse.org

On top of that. If you're a Flex developer, Adobe's Flex is also able to integrate into the Eclipse environment..