Introducing the Eclipse environment

All of the steps in developing a ZIETrans application are performed using the Eclipse ide. Eclipse provides the user interface from which you launch wizards to create resources, view lists of resources, and use editors to modify resources. It also contains help information about both ZIETrans and Eclipse.

When you start Eclipse, you see a single window in which one or more perspectives are displayed. A perspective is a collection of views and editors that allow you to create, edit, view, and run resources which belong to a specific type of project—in this case a ZIETrans project. More than one perspective can be open at a time, although you can view and work with only one at a time.

At the far right of the Eclipse window is a shortcut bar that allows you to open new perspectives and move between perspectives that are already open. The name of the active perspective appears in the title of the window, and the toolbar contains icons associated with the active perspective.

If you are not familiar with the Eclipse environment, refer to the Eclipse Help site at http://www.eclipse.org/documentation/. Start with the Basic tutorial in the Getting started section of the Workbench User Guide.