To get started, you will first need to set up an Eclipse IDE with the RAP Tools installed. You can choose between downloading an Eclipse IDE package with RAP Tools included or getting RAP Tools separately and installing them into your existing IDE.
This screencast shows how to get started with developing RAP applications. It covers RAP target installation, creating a new RAP application and launching it in a web browser.
If you rather want to use an existing Eclipse IDE, you can also get the RAP Tools separately and install them as a plug-in:
RAP applications need to be compiled against the RAP runtime. To do so, the runtime needs to be set as the target platform in Eclipse.
When Eclipse starts on a fresh workspace, a welcome page is displayed. Select the Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) section and choose Install Target Platform on the following page. In the upcoming dialog confirm the default values, which starts the target installation process.
After the installation finished you are prepared to work with RAP. For your first steps you may read the RAP Examples topic and/or the other chapters of the getting started section.