Tips and Tricks

[This section should make interesting bathroom reading for an end user of Eclipse 2.1. It should give them bits of advice on how to use Eclipse effectively. It should stay away for things that a user would naturally discover while using Eclipse, and instead focus on high-value things that they might not have noticed. It also differs in tone from the "New for 2.1" section in that it deals with anything in 2.1, not just the new stuff. Each item should stand by itself (as they would have to if we had a "Tip of the Day" facility).]

[This section needs work. The material here is lifted from the M2 through M5 "New and Noteworthy" bulletins. Some of the items might make good Tips and Tricks.]


Running an Ant target You can double click on a target in the Ant view to run it (equivalent to selecting the target and choosing the Run action from the context menu).
Feature Tips and Tricks [Missing]
User customizable
key bindings
The preference (Workbench / Keys) for customizing key bindings (one of our high priority items for Eclipse 2.1) has been completely reworked.
Better UI for editor / view synchronization The new Navigate > Show In action provides a uniform way to navigate from an open editor to a view showing the corresponding file (e.g., in the resource Navigator view), or from a file selected in one view to the same file in a different view (e.g., from the resource Navigator view to the Java Packages Explorer view).
CVS Watch/Edit The "edit" portion of CVS Watch/Edit is now supported within Eclipse. Through settings on the Team / CVS / Watch/Edit preference page (which must be set before the projects are added to your workspace), you can choose to automatically notify the CVS server whenever you start to edit a file. In turn, the CVS server will notify others on the watch list for that file. When you go to edit a file, you are warned if there are others editing the same file. Team > Show Editors on a file's context menu lists everyone currently working on the file. There are also Team > Edit and Unedit actions.
Working set for imported team projects There is now an option to create a working set for projects imported into the workspace via Import > Team Project Set. This works for all types of repositories.

Terminating Ant builds The Terminate action in the console (or Debug view) can be used to terminate an Ant build running in the background.
Open editors using drag and drop You can now open an editor on an item by dragging the item from a view like the Navigator or Package Explorer and dropping it over the editor area. 

Views can support this by providing a ResourceTransfer, a MarkerTransfer or an EditorInputTransfer in their drag source event handler. See the documentation for these classes under Platform Plug-in Developer Guide / API Reference / Workbench / org.eclipse.ui.part.

Go to last edit position Press Ctrl+Q (Navigate > Go to Last Edit Position) in any text-based editor to take you back to the place where you last made a change. A button marked Go to last edit postion shows up in the toolbar when the Editor Navigation action set is enabled.
Ant output and hyperlinks The output from Ant builds is now written to the Console view in the same hierarchical format seen when running Ant from the command line. Ant tasks (for example "[mkdir]") are hyperlinked to the associated Ant build file, and javac error reports are hyperlinked to the associated Java source file and line number. (Currently, error linking only works for errors reported by the Eclipse Java compiler; other javac error output formats will be added for M5).

The Console now supports hyperlinks for javac and jikes as well as the Eclipse Java compiler. All such error reports are hyperlinked to the associated Java source file and line number.

Help working sets Help working sets have replaced advanced search filtering. Working sets are persisted from one Eclipse session to the next, and can be used in workbench help searches or from the Help browser. They allow narrowing searches down as far as a section of a book.
Improved workspace navigation Whenever the resource Navigator view is visible, Navigate > Open Resource (CTRL+SHIFT+R) brings up a dialog that allow you to quickly locate and open an editor on any file in the workspace. In the same vein, Navigate > Go To > Resource expands and selects the resource in the Navigator view itself.
Now where was I? Workbench editors now keep a navigation history. If  you open a second editor while you're editing away, you can hit  ALT+LeftArrow (Navigate > Backward, or the back arrow on the workbench toolbar) to get back. Working with lots of open editors just got a whole lot easier.
Sort tasks by creation time Use Sort > by Creation Time in the view menu of the Tasks view to sort items in the Tasks view by the time they were created .
Calmer editor linking behavior The resource Navigator view is no longer tightly linked to the currently open editor. Closing or switching editors does not change the selection in the Navigator view. Use the Sync with Editor button in the Navigator view toolbar to manually align the Navigator view to show the file being edited. (It's right beside the new Collapse All button.)
Like to start afresh each session? There is a new preference (Workbench / Editors) to automatically close all open editors before exiting Eclipse.
Help bookmarks You can now keep your own list of bookmarks to pages in help books. Create a bookmark with the new Bookmark Document button on the toolbar of the Help browser. The bookmarks show up in the new Bookmarks tab.
Support for custom help browsers There is a new preference (Workbench / Help) that allows you to configure a custom help browser.
CVS now supports working sets Users can now define working sets which will limit the number of projects shown in the CVS Repositories view.
Comparing different versions Select any folder or file in the CVS Repositories view and choose Compare With from context menu to compare it against some other version.
Restoring deleted files from CVS Deleted files can now be queried and restored from the CVS repository using the Team > Restore from Repository... command, which is available on CVS projects and folders.
CVS Quick Sync A new "quick sync" action has been added to the CVS action set. The action lets you select which CVS projects to synchronize. A new button shows up in the CVS repository view, but you can customize your workbench toolbar to place it within easy reach.
More flexible CVS checkouts A new Checkout Into action lets you check out a folder into an existing project. And a checked-out folder in a project can be disconnected from CVS control so that it can be changed in or deleted from a workspace without queuing up outgoing CVS changes. And CVS projects can now be configured to not fetch absent directories on update.