Microsoft wants to improve Eclipse
Seems Microsoft is trying to show a kinder, gentler side to Open Source and Java development communities. In the past they made overtures to improve PHP on Windows server. They also sat down and collaborated with JBoss and now they plan on supporting Eclipse.
Microsoft plans on assisting the Eclipse SWT team to enable Java developers to create applications that look and feel like Windows Vista. In addition, they plan on supporting Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application development with Eclipse SWT.
Sam Ramji, the director of Microsoft's open-source software lab, thinks "It just makes sense to enable Java on Windows". (Flashbacks of J++ 6.0 come to mind).
This last Wednesday, Mr. Ramji made an announcement at the EclipseCon conference in Santa Clara, Calif. that Microsoft will work with Eclipse.
For more details check out these related links:
What if any impact do you think this will make on GUI development with Java?
Will this increase the number of rich GUIs developed with Java?
Why would someone use Java to develop application that only runs on Vista?
How much of an impact will this be since SWT development is dwarfed by Swing?
References
- Microsoft's Ramji Extends Olive Branch To Eclipse Users, Charles Babcock, InformationWeek
- Microsoft to work with Eclipse on Java, Martin LaMonica, CNETNews.
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Comments
Rick Hightower replied on Fri, 2008/03/21 - 5:24am
Vista motivated me to swtich to Mac OS X. My primary development box is now a MacBook Pro as of about three weeks ago after struggling with Vista on my Sony VAIO for about six months.
My MacBook pro is the best laptop I have ever owned. I took my Sony laptop and installed Ubuntu on it (My Sony laptop is a lot faster now and now the Hibernate laptop feature actually works). I am a very happy Mac user.
Brian S O'Neill replied on Fri, 2008/03/21 - 12:03pm
Mary-Joy replied on Fri, 2008/03/21 - 5:17pm
Mario replied on Sat, 2008/03/22 - 5:27am
Ian Griffiths replied on Sat, 2008/03/22 - 4:50pm
I can only agree with Microsoft's comment that "it just makes sense to enable Java on Windows". In fact that's what we've been doing the last twelve years, so I'm reassured that they have come to the same conclusion after all this time!
Obviously, as they are new to Java, they don't know yet that the standard and most used UI tool is Swing. I'm certain that when they discover this, they will invest heavily in helping the OpenJDK team improve the XP and Vista L&Fs so that they are indistinguishable from the original.
It is, of course, unthinkable that they may be investing in SWT to reignite the Swing vs SWT war that seems to have subsided recently. Perish the thought!
Rick Hightower replied on Mon, 2008/03/24 - 3:33pm
I am quite sure MS only has good intentions. :o)
SWT vs. Swing.... Why would they want to get involved in that?
Mike P replied on Mon, 2008/03/24 - 3:58pm
Each own notion of what an "Omega Equilibrium" might be, combined with politics and strategy, leaves us with the choices. Surely, if one would take advantage of all the WPF features on the Windows platform, you'd be coding using visual studio and all their proprietary tools (and languages). I fail to see what value Microsoft bring us.
Rick Hightower replied on Mon, 2008/03/24 - 5:48pm
in response to: okidoky
I am no Flex expert, but isn't Flex Open Source now...??
http://www.flex.org
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source
Raffaele Gambelli replied on Wed, 2008/03/26 - 4:06am
There was a time where (almost) all IT entities followed Microsoft...
Finally, the time for Microsoft to follow has came.
Dennis Cheung replied on Thu, 2008/03/27 - 9:08am
I am thinking, are microsoft trying to learn something from SWT(with Java) to improve their WPF(with C#)?
And again, SWT vs. Swing, as always.
I choose SWT for sure.
Dennis Cheung replied on Thu, 2008/03/27 - 9:25am
Dear Ian Griffiths,
MS absolutely know SWING, and they are absolutely not new to Java.
SUN and MS are already working eachother to imrpove SWING. It's one of the reasons why SWING become much faster on Windows than that before. It was started since JDK6/JDK7 development, I am not sure.
Anyway,
I hate L&F (especially file dialog), it is slow, fake, buggy, lost OS intergated feature, you may cannot see file name in your own lanauge.
After you paid all of these, you get a wonderful dialog "look like" the native one, without any adv. feature provided in the real native dialog.