MyEclipse Stable Stream Delivery Log

Angular & TypeScript

Angular 5

This release supports Angular 5 out of the box, and the very latest CLIs as well. Whatever version you choose, you will continue to get the entire range of our Angular support, from content assist and validation, to being able to serve and debug applications with ease.

The Angular 5 release has brought with it dozens of changes, several in the performance space. For example, the build optimer is on by default for production builds, resulting in smaller bundles. The Angular compiler has improved support for incremental compilation, along with an integration of a new version of Webpack, which has performance improvements too – don’t miss the ahead-of-time (AOT) compiler too.

If you are just jumping to this version, please read this article for further details.

TypeScript 2.5

We’ve added support for this version of TypeScript – you have access to a few new quick fixes and a compiler which will do a better job with handling multiple resolutions of the same file. For more details, please read this article. If you missed  features in earlier versions, like Async Generators, or the new for..await..of statements in TypeScript 2.3, this release has you covered, of course.

We have also added validation for the tsconfig.json file – invalid configurations will now be detected as errors and will show up in the editor and Problems view.

TSLint 5

We’ve got you covered with support for TSLint 5 (with our internal default being set to 5.6.0) – including support for severity levels on linting rules. As always, we respect the version of TSLint you’re using in your project.

Refactoring

We’ve always had refactoring for TypeScript variables, fields, methods and functions – but you were required to go through a dialog. Now you can now refactor these elements inline! You can rename files and folders, and imports will be correctly adjusted.

A refactoring preview will help you review your changes before you commit them to your project.

Renaming or moving an HTML or CSS file that’s associated with an Angular component will result in references to these files being correctly updated too.

Usability

We’ve toned down the “busyness” of the Angular perspective, for a much cleaner and focused coding experience.

Also added the much awaited Open Type functionality to our tooling, which allows you to easily and quickly navigate to any symbol of interest, across your workspace or in specific projects. Use the toolbar button, or Ctrl + Shift + T, to bring up this dialog and tell us what you think!

Miscellaneous Fixes and Improvements:

• We’ve added a feature to provide custom arguments to the Chrome process when launching the Angular application.
• Stopping the Angular server will now ensure the Node process is terminated as well. This ensures you won’t have a port blocking problem when restarting the server – this was an issue on Windows.
• On a Mac Pro, or any other systems with multiple ethernet cards, much of our Angular server tooling was defunct, including status monitoring and debugging. This has now been fixed.
• We will provide you with content assist in import statements making it easy to find and import the file or library you need.
• When creating an Angular project, you can now elect to use pre-installed versions of Node and NPM that you may already have installed on your system.
• Importing projects which have their tsconfig.json file in the project root now works.
• References to properties via shorthand notation is now no longer marked as an error.
• The Pipe (|) in TypeScript 2.2 source will no longer be reported as an error when correctly used.
• In projects using Angular 2.x and TypeScript 2.2, the false negative, “Pipe signature not found”, has been fixed.
• An empty baseUrl property in tsconfig files is now correctly handled, fixing related validation issues.
• TSLint can now load custom rules.
• Attempting to use the quick fix functionality to implement an interface would sometimes result in the IDE hanging. This has now been fixed.
• In a TypeScript project, TSLint will now validate js, jsx and tsx files too.
• Performance issues around editing large TypeScript files have been fixed.

DevStyle

Several users have asked about DevStyle and the Darkest Dark theme – you don’t need to install these separately, they are part of your MyEclipse build.

Inline Search

Find the modal search dialog cumbersome? We’ve replaced this with a very capable inline search – we’re sure you’ll find it far more efficient, and unintrusive, it won’t interrupt your workflow.

Note: The enhanced Startup Experience, that is part of DevStyle for Eclipse, is not available in MyEclipse at this time.

Themes

Make your workbench a work of art. DevStyle allows you to define a theme that’s uniquely you! What is your idea of the perfect theme? Light and bright? Dark with pops of color? Fine tune your workbench, even down to specific hues and custom icons that speak to you.

If you didn’t catch it already – yes, we now have awesome looking  light themes too!

Another interesting theme feature is the ability to choose between Icon color sets – the Simply White and Pastel tones allow you to decide how toolbars and icons look throughout your IDE. We also are making available over 750 more replacement icons thanks to a huge contribution by bettmaeyer, and efforts by Lukasz and others. Finally, a host of editor themes are also bundled!

Tip: Darkest Dark theme settings in the Preference dialog have been moved from General > Appearance > Darkest Dark to DevStyle > Color Themes.

Dozens of fixes have also been made for our Dark themes, a few are noted below:

• The last line of the Terminal view was sometimes hidden.
• Darkest Dark will now work correctly on 32-bit Windows.
• The JUnit view’s trace section now uses the right colors in the dark theme.
• Line numbers will now update when scrolling by dragging the editor scrollbar.
• Jittering rulers/editors in the BIRT Design perspective have been stilled.
• Pressing Ctrl + Shift + M in the PHP editor (if you’ve installed this into MyEclipse) could cause the IDE to hang on exit, this has been fixed.
• A rare issue, where an error dialog relating to the user of JNIWrapper would display on exiting the IDE, has been fixed.
• Syntax color preferences changes in the Java editor are respected.
• Exceptions will no longer be logged when opening the JavaDoc view
• HiDPI icons would only correctly work in our dark themes, and were N/A in the light themes.
• Configure contents dialog of the Problems / Markers view will now render correctly.
• The expand / collapse control for Tree controls will now be shown at the right position.

The following will be better colored in both our Dark and Light themes:

• JUnit view’s trace selection
• JUnit test coverage in Java classes
• Properties editor
• XSD editor
• Table headers in the Tasks view
• QuickDiff in the EGit history view
• Java Call Hierarchy view
• Comment text in Git Staging view
• Quickdiff popup

Servers

MyEclipse now includes a connector for WebSphere Portal Server 9, TomEE 7 and Glassfish 5. You can now manage these server from within MyEclipse, along with the usual deployment and debug support, of course!

We also support the deployment of Java EE 7 projects to Weblogic 12.2.1 and later versions.

Miscellaneous Core Fixes

• Our Eclipse Buildship version has been updated to 2.1.2 to provide better support for building software with Gradle.
• Running Node / npm processes could sometimes prevent the IDE from gracefully shutting down. This has now been fixed.
• An issue where too many connections were opened in some network environments was fixed.
• The “dependencies only” Maven container now works as expected.
• The Run As > Maven Build action will now use the project relative path to the pom.xml as the base directory.
• When you import a standalone Maven project, a project migration process will not be triggered.
• Importing some older Spring / JPA projects into MyEclipse would result in a ADD_SPRING_JPA_SUPPORT error being shown. This is now fixed.
• If your perspective contained multiple Open TypeScript Symbol buttons in the toolbar, please switch to a new Window, using Window > New Window to get a perspective without these buttons. The problem will not recur.
• An IllegalArgumentException thrown during the initialization of some Spring projects has been fixed.

Angular

Our Angular tooling supports development with Angular 2 and the recently released Angular 4 as well, from getting quickly started with a new project, to coding, deployment and debugging, we’ve got you covered.

Quickstart
A key capability of our Angular support, especially for beginners, is that there are virtually no prerequisites — we’ll download everything from Node to the Angular CLI for you, automatically. So if you were concerned about getting your environment set up right and downloading dependencies in advance, don’t bother! While our wizards will suggest recommended defaults, you are free to choose other versions of Node, NPM, or the Angular CLI. You can start with a basic project, or a template based on the popular SB Admin theme.

HTML Template Intelligence
When you’re developing Angular applications, you need an IDE that can support you when you’re developing templates. Our tooling provides Angular validation, so that you’ll know if you’ve mistyped an Angular element or attribute, or called a non-existent method. Our auto-complete support will provide suggestions for Angular tags, attributes and even expressions. Within expressions, we support the Angular Template syntax, so expect to see content assist for variables, methods, fields, functions, etc., from your referenced components. Hyperlink navigation allows you to easily navigate to other parts of the template, or even jump from the template to TypeScript source.

Angular CLI Integration
Our tooling is built on top of the Angular CLI, for servicing Angular applications, and includes best-practices compliant generation of services, components and more. An enhanced terminal ensures paths and environment are ready for rapid development.

• Seamless launching of ng serve from the IDE
• Display of server build problems alongside the code
• Automatic detection of external ng serve invocations
• Generate services and components from wizards

Deployment & Debugging
To deploy your application for testing, simply bring up the context menu on the project and choose Run As > Angular Web Application. Alternatively, you can open the Servers view and find your project under the Angular CLI node, from where you can easily start and stop deployment, or even start a debugging session. Not only is your application being served for local testing in a browser, a LiveReload server is also started. With LiveReload, any time you change a source file and save it, the application is rebuilt, the deployment is updated and the browser page, if you have it opened, is automatically refreshed as well.

To debug, you can use the Servers view or the Debug As > Angular Web Application context menu item. You can place breakpoints in HTML, JavaScript, and TypeScript files too — our debugger will allow you to step through the original TypeScript source during a live debugging session.

CodeLive
CodeLive now includes support for Angular. CodeLive can be enabled per project from the Angular CLI Server in the Servers view. With CodeLive you can jump to your source code in the editor directly from the browser. Display the CodeLive Dashboard  to view all active Angular components on the web page. When you hover over a component, an icon displays to the right of the component for each type of corresponding file: TypeScript  , HTML template  and CSS  . Click the file you wish to view.

In addition, you can use the Inspector   to view specific components on the web page. Hover over a component on the page to view the component name. Click the component to view the dashboard list filtered for the selected component, and then select the file you wish to view.

Upgrading to Angular 4
If you want to upgrade an Angular 2 project to Angular 4, select your Angular 2 project and click on the Upgrade action in our toolbar. Our upgrade wizard will upgrade a whole lot of configuration files, as well as fix some of your code, if necessary. At the end of the process, we’ll give you a set of manual steps that you may need to take to complete the process.

Even outside the automated upgrade process, you can use several new quick fixes to update your TypeScript classes and Angular templates, piecemeal, to Angular 4 standards.

Note: Due to some Eclipse limitations, some of these quick fixes are only currently accessible from the Markers view.

Enhanced Local Terminal
The Terminal+ gives you a bash based local shell, even on Windows! It has in-built support for NPM, Node and Git, along with special smarts when you’re working with the Angular CLI. The terminal is project context aware, so when you switch projects, the view will automatically update its open tabs to match the state you were last in, when working with the selected project. It will also set up your shell environment to the use the versions of Node and NPM specified on the project’s CLI Tool Management property page – even downloading those versions if you don’t already have them. This ensures that you and your teammates can work in the same environment.

TypeScript

We’ve added full support for TypeScript 2.1 – including new types, constructs and support for tslib. With configuration inheritance, you can split your configuration across several files, making it much easier to develop against multiple targets. Needless to say, our TypeScript 2.0 support is also on point, with support for all the newer properties like types, typeRoots, lib, and the different ways in which TypeScript files can be added to your project’s source.

Initial support for TypeScript 2.2 is present as well, with support for TypeScript plugins coming soon.

Our fundamental TypeScript support remains rock solid, with support for as-you-type validation, auto-completion, hyperlink navigation — even to Angular templates, and full, bidirectional support for settings configured in the tsconfig.json file.

Since we write a fair bit of TypeScript internally, we’ve been “dogfooding” these features and our productivity has increased significantly – we’re sure your experience will be similar.

Import Support for TypeScript Symbols
One of the biggest pain points when working with TypeScript, is having to manually import classes, interfaces, namespaces, functions…in short, any type of TypeScript symbol into your source file. Well, we have good news for you! Content assist suggestions will include symbol suggestions too, and when selected, not only will we complete the name for you, but we’ll also import it.

Content Assist Improvements
If you’ve gotten tired of typing this. for every field/method when coding, just initiate content assist. Not only are the proposals better sorted than before, it will also list fields and methods too (without you having to type this. first), and will insert the this. bit automatically on completion. We’ve also added in a few templates to making coding more efficient.

Quick Fixes
We also have quick fix support, so invoking a quick fix on an undefined identifier will result in the symbol being correctly imported into your source. If you’re working with TypeScript 2.2, new quick fixes will become available, like fixes for unused variables, unimplemented abstract methods, etc.

On-Save Actions
These actions will now execute automatically when you save a TypeScript file. The actions currently available allow you to automatically format your document, correct whitespace issues and remove unused imports when your file is saved. These actions can be configured globally, as well as at a per-project level.

TSLint Integration
TSLint is an extensible linter for TypeScript. While our existing TypeScript validator will already find syntax errors in your code, TSLint checks your code for readability, maintainability, and functionality errors – allowing you to fix them before running into them in production, at runtime.

We support both TSLint 3 and 4. If you have TSLint installed in your project, we will use that version to ensure expected, consistent linting behavior, if you don’t have TSLint installed, we will automatically use TSLint 4.3, giving you access to a number of new linting rules and capabilities.

So, how does our integration work? For Angular projects, a tslint.json is created in your project’s root folder; we use the settings in this configuration file when linting your project. Issues noticed are marked as warnings in the editor’s ruler area and in the Problems view. This ensures your Angular project conforms to NG best practices.

A key feature is our quick fix support – you can fix the problem automatically, remove the linting rule if you don’t like it, or simply turn off linting for the entire project. TSLint can catch a number of potential problems – from style issues like whitespace and indentation, to functionality issues like duplicate variables, unused expressions or variables used before they are declared. For a more complete list, please see: https://palantir.github.io/tslint/rules/.

Editor Enhancements
Features like occurrence highlighting, word wrap, block edit and whitespace display can be controlled from the toolbar.

Darkest Dark

Our new Darkest Dark theme delivers a fully dark UI with icons designed specifically for a dark theme. To use the Darkest Dark theme, simply select it from Preferences>General>Appearance. It’s also simple to customize your editor colors when using the Darkest Dark theme. Simply go to Preferences>General>Appearance>Darkest Dark and select the editor colors you prefer.

The Darkest Dark theme also works with an array of third-party plugins that you might add to your MyEclipse install. When a plugin allows configuration of a color in preferences (Colors and Fonts), the Darkest Dark theme will automatically create an alternate color that looks nice with Darkest Dark. In addition, the theme will now inherit explicit Dark color configurations by plugins so that if a plugin developer takes the time to make dark alternatives for the Eclipse Dark theme, Darkest Dark users will also benefit!

Embedded Tomcat Server

The embedded Tomcat server has been upgraded from version 7.0 to 8.5, finally giving you a server on which you can deploy Java EE 7 web applications out of the box. If your projects were using the 7.0 runtime, our migration wizard will help you move to the 8.5 runtime in 2017.

Gradle Integration

We’ve integrated the Gradle tooling from the Eclipse Buildship project. This gives you the ability to create Gradle projects, an editor for Gradle files, and the ability to execute and monitor Gradle tasks. MyEclipse currently makes no modifications to this tooling, but do let us know how we can enhance your Gradle experience, especially when dealing with Java EE development.

Eclipse Mars

MyEclipse is now built on Eclipse Mars 1 (4.5.1). Beyond upgrading the base version of Eclipse, we’ve also refreshed integrations and updated to new versions of third party tooling that MyEclipse is built on, such as STS, m2e, BIRT, Webtools, eGit, etc.

The Mars integration brings in hardcore Java enhancements like improved compiler performance and better support for Lambda expressions, a better looking UI with support for today’s high resolution displays, and several performance and usability fixes across the board.

Live Preview with CodeLive

This stable release of MyEclipse introduces CodeLive. Live Preview is the first feature included in CodeLive, with additional features coming in future releases. Live Preview allows you to  instantly view changes to your HTML and CSS within your normal Java EE development workflow—no browser plugin or active debug session required.  You can even view these changes in multiple browsers and simulated mobile devices simultaneously. The initial release of Live Preview includes limited JSP support for static blocks, with further enhancements planned for future releases.

To use Live Preview, you will need to turn on CodeLive per server, and then select the files you want to use CodeLive. When you view your web project in a browser, you can open the CodeLive panel to view files loaded from your IDE, open files in the IDE and select the files that will utilize CodeLive. More Information

JSjet

Syntax Highlighting

Tired of how dull a rich, dynamic language like JavaScript looks in Eclipse? JSjet significantly improves the syntax highlighting in JavaScript code, vastly improving readability.

Call and Type Hierarchies

The Call Hierarchy view enables you to easily visualize the flow of your code by viewing all calls to and from a selected function. JSjet takes this handy view a step further by allowing you to view hierarchies for methods, fields and variables.

Another invaluable view is the Type Hierarchy. JSjet provides strong support for type hierarchies. This view will likely become a favorite if you are taking advantage of the new classes capability in ES6.

ES6 Support

JSjet is ECMAScript 6 aware, so all JavaScript features, ranging from fundamentals like syntax highlighting and code folding, to features like the call/type hierarchies, and the formatter work correctly, even when dealing with ES6 code.

Besides these, JSjet includes a faster and more accurate validator, a more complete and detailed outline, better occurrences highlighting and navigation, and a source formatter that doesn’t balk at ES6 code. A few JavaScript linters like JSHint and ESLint are available too! For more details, please see this page.

JSjet thanks Eclipse for providing a superb IDE to build on top of. In addition, a special shout out to Angelo Zerr and the Tern community for some awesome building blocks.

JavaScript Debugging

Source Maps

The JavaScript debugger now supports source maps, so you can step through and debug against your original source during a debug session, even though, at runtime, your application is using transpiled or minified source, or source that is modified in some other way. For instance, you can now place breakpoints and step through .ts (TypeScript) or .coffee (CoffeeScript) files too! 

Source map support is automatic and does not need to be explicitly enabled. Our JavaScript debugger loads the maps in your runtime scripts and uses them to reference the original source from your workspace if possible; if not, you can still debug against the uncompressed source that is present in the map itself.

For the best experience with source maps, please ensure that you build your project with the right source map related flags. For more details, please read this doc.

Hot-Swap

Need to modify your JavaScript in the middle of debugging session? No problem – once you modify and save your changes, the JavaScript debugger picks up these changes and you can continue debugging against the modified code, without needing to restart the debugging session. Hot-swap is only available for Web Application debugging where it is turned on by default. It is not currently available for Node debug sessions.

Remote Node Debugging

Have an externally deployed Node application that you would like to debug? Use the new Node.js/V8 connector under the Remote Javascript debug configuration to debug against this instance. If you have the same files that are being deployed to Node.js in your workspace, the debugger will automatically pick up these files as source.

Remote WebSphere Connectors

Ever want to work with a WebSphere server that is not on your development machine? With our refreshed Remote WebSphere support, you now can. You can set up the connector in a way that is similar to a local WebSphere connector, but deploy to a remotely hosted server instead. You can even debug and hot-sync code against this remote instance, as you would with any local WebSphere installation.

Please see this page for more details on Remote WebSphere support.

Note: For older users of MyEclipse, the Remote WebSphere support was last present in MyEclipse 2014 and has been re-written for MyEclipse 2016 to be more robust, capable, and work seamlessly with your Java EE development processes in the IDE.

Bootstrap Your App Development with Templates

If you ever wanted to quickly get started with a great looking UI for your web application, but didn’t know how to get started—we can now help with our new template support!

Select a template from the Template tab in the dashboard and simply follow the wizard to get a Java EE application, bootstrapped with the chosen template. You can then easily customize the template as per your requirements.

While the current set of templates are based on the Bootstrap framework and produce Java EE applications, as we add support for additional web frameworks and project types to MyEclipse, we’ll be expanding our template support accordingly. Beyond Bootstrap, we could have Angular or React templates (for example) and in addition to Java EE projects, we could support Node.js, PHP, Static Web projects, etc.

Do give our template support a spin and tell us what you think!

Terminal, Snippets View, and Docker Commands

If you’ve ever wanted to jump to the command-line but find leaving MyEclipse disruptive, you’ll be happy with our new integrated command-line support. MyEclipse now includes the TM Terminal plugin, which supports both local consoles as well as remote shells. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a local command prompt. Previous sessions are remembered and automatically reconnect on restart.

Having a hard time remembering complex CLI commands? The Snippets view and the Terminal have both been enhanced to allow snippets representing commands to be dragged and dropped into the terminal for immediate execution or quick editing. You can even DnD commands from a text file! If you’re a Docker user, you’ll like the set of Docker commands that we’ve added to the Snippets view.

Hibernate 5.1

Hibernate 5.1 may only be months old, but we’ve added support for Hibernate 5.1 projects in MyEclipse. Hibernate 5.1 can be used in standalone Java applications, Java EE applications or even as a JPA 2.1 provider. We’ve included libraries for new Hibernate capabilities like Hibernate Search as well.

CSS 3

It’s now easy to set the CSS spec level for your workspace using the CSS Source preference page. This preference can be overridden at the project level too—MyEclipse 2016 uses CSS3 as the default CSS specification level.

We’ve also updated the CSS 3 property and keyword definitions to give you more complete and up-to-date content assist.

Eclipse Code Sharing for Slack

Eclipse Code Sharing for Slack is now using the OAuth flow and no longer requires you to get a token from Slack before using the feature. Now you simply need to give Eclipse Code Sharing for Slack permission to access your Slack account. You are prompted for authorization the first time you share code with Slack.  All you have to do is click Add to Slack and you are ready to start sharing code with your teammates! Or, you can give permission at any time from Windows>Preferences>MyEclipse>Code Sharing for Slack.

Slack sharing will now correctly work even behind a proxy, sharing is now more robust in general.

The following commands are now available in Slack when you use Eclipse Code Sharing for Slack:

JavaScript Debugger

You can now debug both modern Web applications and Node.js applications on all platforms and architectures – yes, including the oft requested Windows 64-bit OS. Node.js support allows you to debug against Node versions 0.10, 0.11 and 0.12, and all Java EE versions are supported.

Our launching shortcuts make it easy to initiate debugging and utilize the Eclipse debugging features you are accustomed to. Hover during JavaScript debugging will now evaluate expressions, and the object being examined will also be highlighted in the source editor. In addition, we now have better handling for sites with invalid SSL certificates.

The new externally deployed debugging support allows you to debug an application that has already been deployed, or step through some code in a website online. JavaScript debugging is no longer limited to Java EE applications.

• If you have source in your workspace you’d like to debug against, simply bring up the context menu on an HTML file and choose Debug As > JavaScript in Externally Deployed Web Application.
• If you want to debug a website, simply create a new JavaScript debugging launch configuration with Externally Deployed as the type.

REST Web Services

The new REST Inspect application allows you to discover, create and test endpoints. You can also save endpoints with different parameters to be used as test data for you and your team.  Another way to benefit from REST Inspect is to use it as a “sandbox” to test remote web services included in your project.

The improved REST Explorer view now has a much more intuitive display of endpoints and is deployment aware as well. This view works with REST Inspect, allowing you to explore the endpoint further in REST Inspect or execute previously tested services directly from within MyEclipse.

REST Explorer also indicates both input and output MIME types for your endpoints within the view itself. Also, the REST Explorer can handle multiple JAX-RS methods at the same resource path.   A structured outline is provided for easy navigation, and both REST Inspect and the REST Explorer are RAML aware.  

A new editor for RAML files includes validation support.

Slack Integration

MyEclipse now integrates with Slack.  Simply register a Slack token and then you are ready to send and receive code snippets. You can even view shared code directly in Eclipse without needing to access Slack to view the code.

WebSphere

• You can now launch jython and JACL admin scripts from within MyEclipse using a launch configuration. We also have support for running these scripts using Run As > WAS admin script
• WebSphere server state detection (stopped, starting, started, etc.) is now more robust; several bugs around incorrect state detection have been fixed.
• The JAX-RPC and JAX-WS web service client generation process can now optionally generate a proxy class.
• Introspection of existing classes can be turned on/off for JAX-RPC web service and web service client generation.
• In the in-workspace deployment mode, dependencies to web fragments, specified via Maven, were not being deployed; this has been fixed.

JavaScript Frameworks

Support for existing JavaScript frameworks has been improved, with support for new frameworks added.

Content assist continues to improve with support for multiple types in assist proposals; you will also see framework icons in your content assist proposals, making it much easier to use.

The JavaScript source tab’s (Project Properties > MyEclipse > JavaScript Resources) include/exclude rules now support bash-like regular expressions through minimatch, if you ever need that much flexibility. The same expression support is now being used in several popular JavaScript frameworks.

Finally, on our road to ES6 support, content assist for Promises has been improved with better then value completion. Improved ES6 support is coming soon.

Gerrit Workflow

If you use Gerrit for code review and repository management for Git, you’ll be excited to see the process streamlined with our Gerrit Workflow. Now, it’s a breeze to instantly fetch changes and switch between multiple feature and stable branches. Plus, you’ll ensure a high quality of code and test against regressions before submitting code to stable branches.

Breadcrumb Navigation

The Breadcrumb toolbar allows you to quickly navigate through your workspace and open files for editing. The crumb trail that led to the current file in the source editor displays in the Breadcrumb toolbar. Click on any crumb in the trail to navigate to a different resource in your project.

PhoneGap

While we are still embedding PhoneGap 3.6.3, we’ve fixed issues building PhoneGap 5.3 applications. You can now build apps using this version of PhoneGap for both iOS and Android.

Server Enhancements

New Connectors—MyEclipse now includes connectors for Jetty 8, Jetty 9, Payara 4, Wildfly 9 and Wildfly 10! Deploy and debug against these servers with ease.

Import/Export—You can now import / export server configurations from MyEclipse 2015. You can also import server configurations from 2014 and earlier versions, of course.

Glassfish—For Glassfish versions 3 and later, the Open in Browser action now allows you to open deployed web applications directly in a browser.

Minimap Provides Source File Overview

When you’re working with a large amount of code, the Minimap makes it easy to navigate through your source. Most developers have a “mental map” of how their code is formatted. This new view shows you the bigger picture at a glance and allows a quick jump to the section you need.  The Minimap works for all source editors including Java, JavaScript, HTML, etc.

Tomcat Server Connector Fixes

A number of fixes were made to the Tomcat server connector to make both auto-deployment and context deployment robust and more intuitive. Several issues around the storage of configuration files in the workspace and  changes to the server working directory were fixed.

Additional Connection Protocol for WebSphere

In addition to IPC, SOAP is now available as a connection protocol for all WAS servers.

Several issues have been fixed with the in-workspace deployment mode.

Context Root Added to Deployment Assembly Properties

The deployment page has been reworked for Web projects to handle the context root setting. This puts all Web project related settings like the WebRoot folder, context root and the archive name on a single Properties page.

JavaScript Performance Improvements

JavaScript in Stable 2.0 is more efficient than ever. We’ve improved the performance of our JavaScript analysis out of the box. If you have a very large project, it should not affect the overall performance of MyEclipse.

In addition, you can adjust a performance/quality setting or set a scope for the JavaScript analysis to improve performance further. Finally, if you don’t care for these features, you can simply turn it all off. These settings are available both globally and at a per project level (See Window>Preferences>MyEclipse>JavaScript>Performance).

Given the large number of false negatives in the JavaScript validator, we decided that developers are better served by disabling the JavaScript validator at a global level. You can enable it at Window>Preferences>MyEclipse>Validation  – turn on the Client-side JavaScript Validator. You can also control this setting at the project level to turn it on/off for individual projects. The MyEclipse team is working on improving the JavaScript validation experience.

Emmet Integration

Do you find yourself working with a lot of HTML? Maybe CSS or XML? It can often be tiresome to type in loads of markup or simply make the edits you need easily and quickly, especially when dealing with a large amount of content. This is where Emmet comes in!

Unlike regular snippet functionality, with Emmet you can type CSS-like expressions which are dynamically parsed and then expanded immediately into well formed markup, saving you loads of typing.

For example, in an HTML file, if you type: nav>ul>li and press Ctrl + Alt + Enter, you will get

<nav>
   <ul>
     <li>
     </li>
   </ul>
</nav>

A more complicated example, ul>li.item$*5 will result in

<ul>
   <li class="item1"></li>
   <li class="item2"></li>
   <li class="item3"></li>
   <li class="item4"></li>
   <li class="item5"></li>
</ul>

Now, a couple of CSS examples:

bd:n expands to border: none;

ff:v expands to font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

There are literally hundreds of additional abbreviations – in MyEclipse, bring up the context menu in a supported file and choose Emmet>Emmet Cheat Sheet for a list. Also, there are dozens of useful keyboard shortcuts and everything is customizable, of course. If you don’t like Ctrl + Alt + Enter, you could switch to any other key combination (perhaps the Tab key?) by editing the key bindings in Window>Preferences>General Keys.

Beyond code expansion, Emmet also helps with code navigation and selections too. Emmet works in (X)HTML, CSS, XML, XSL and JSP files. It will even give you CSS specific expansions in the CSS sections in HTML files or HTML support at appropriate locations in JSP files.

See the MyEclipse HTML Editor doc for a quick demo.

A big hat tip to Sergey Chikuyonok for his fantastic work on both Emmet and Emmet-Eclipse. For tech folk out there, the version of Emmet we’re using internally is 1.2.2.

Integrated Version of Tern Java 0.8.0

This latest integration of Tern adds the following enhancements to JavaScript coding:

Completion Guess Support
When a content assist proposal is applied, a second set of proposals will automatically display probable matches based on the type of the function parameter.  Learn more about Guess Support.

Completion String Support
This feature gathers short strings in your code, and string completion suggestions include previously seen strings. Learn more about String Support.

ECMAScript 6
Switch to ECMAScript 6  for Promise support.

RequireJS Object Literal Completion
For the RequireJS config object, applying completion generates a property key/value pair.

Additional Frameworks
We have also added support for a couple of additional frameworks like Jasmine, Protractor, and snabbit.js.

To enable these additional features, open the project properties, expand MyEclipse, and select JavaScript Resources. Select the features you want to use. You can also change the defaults for new projects by selecting Window>Preferences, expanding MyEclipse>JavaScript>Tern>Development, and selecting Repository.

As always, a shout out to Angelo Zerr and the Tern JS/Java community for their continued work in this area.

Icon Preview of Images

If you work with images, you’ll find the new icon preview really handy. Instead of seeing the boring, standard icon for images, we now render an icon sized version of your image right in the explorer tree.

Note: To keep things efficient, we only render thumbnails for images that are 100KB or smaller in size. Images larger than that typically have dimensions that reduce the utility of the 16×16 scaled down versions.

A hat-tip, again, to Jeeyul for his pde-tools plugins from which we bring you this functionality.

PhoneGap Ionic Templates

When creating PhoneGap mobile application projects, you have more template options to choose from. Ionic templates give you a starting point for your Ionic UI design. The templates are available from the PhoneGap Application Project wizard.

Ionic Palette in the Visual HTML Designer

The Visual HTML Designer now has an Ionic palette and corresponding wizards that make it easy to add Ionic widgets to your pages – big hat tip to JBoss Tools.

Improved Performance of the PhoneGap Plugin Wizard

The PhoneGap plugin wizard has been reworked so that it is immediately usable on invocation (prior to this fix, the wizard could take a few minutes to be usable). The list now shows a fixed number of plugins based on your filtering criteria.

Custom Integration of tern.java

We’ve given our JavaScript support a boost by using tern.js under the covers with a custom integration of tern.java (version 0.7.0). JavaScript content assist provided in both standalone JS files as well as HTML files has been significantly improved in terms of the number and validity of the proposals provided. We also provide easy  access to content assist for a large number of third party libraries. 

Technology modules can be added from the Properties page, or easily include them from the MyEclipse menu.

This is our first integration of Tern into MyEclipse. We will be polishing the integration and leveraging Tern to enhance other areas of JavaScript in MyEclipse beyond content assist.

Initial Support for AngularJS

AngularJS is a hot topic, and MyEclipse 2015 includes basic support to help you get started with this exciting technology. You’ll find project and general properties for AngularJS, content assist, and a new Angular Explorer view. Currently, we support AngularJS  version 0.7.0. Stand by – we will add more AngularJS integration in subsequent releases! 

Special Thanks
We would like to extend special thanks to Angelo Zerr, whose Tern.js and Angular JS plugins are the basis for our support of these technologies. Thank you!

New REST Explorer Provides More Flexibility

The new MyEclipse REST explorer has been written from the ground up to allow you to explore REST web services through WADL files. You can even create WADL files from scratch and use the explorer to hit the end points immediately.

The REST API node in the MyEclipse Explorer view includes a few predefined REST services that you can explore in the REST Explorer. These services require authentication; both OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 (code grant flow) are currently supported – feel free to add your own services to the list.

This explorer does work on all OSs and architectures and is miles ahead of the explorer we had in earlier releases.

REST Web Services Project Explorer

The REST Project Explorer view gives you an overview at a glance of the web services you’ve defined for a specific project. Quickly navigate between methods and resources; double-clicking a method in the REST Project Explorer view opens the resource file to the selected method. The same REST services information also appears in the MyEclipse Explorer view.

Mobile Tooling - PhoneGap Support

The new PhoneGap Application Project wizard enables development of hybrid HTML5-Native mobile apps using PhoneGap 3.5.0 or 3.6.3 for both Android and iOS. PhoneGap projects automatically use PhoneGap 3.6; with support for both local and remote builds.You can still use PhoneGap 3.5, of course – or install the version of your choice externally.

Manage plug-ins using the Plug-in wizard, test apps in the Mobile Web Simulator, and then use PhoneGap Build Services to build your app for testing on devices or for final release.

Note: PhoneGap project tools replace the previous HTML5 Mobile app tools.

New PhoneGap Configuration Editor

The PhoneGap configuration editor is a form-based editor that makes setting up for PhoneGap builds much easier. The source pane provides both content assist and validation for the widget and gap namespaces, making editing these files a breeze.

Additional PhoneGap features include:

• Java KeyStore files are supported for signing Android builds.
• When adding a plug-in, both the version and the source are saved in the config.xml file to ensure the same plugin is used for both local and remote builds.
• Paths to icons and splash screens in config.xml are  validated. We let you know if you’re pointing to missing resources.
• Remote debugging can be enabled either during project creation or from the config.xml editor.

PhoneGap Project JQuery Mobile Templates

Starting PhoneGap mobile projects is easy with JQuery Mobile templates built into the New Project wizard.

Server Connectors Updated to the WTP Framework

Ever since our first release, MyEclipse has shipped custom server connectors. Over the past decade, we’ve added support for more than a dozen server families ranging from Apache’s Tomcat to IBM’s WebSphere, with multiple versions supported per family.

With 2015, we’re merging our connector framework with the Web Tools server framework, giving you the best server tooling across both camps. All the servers we have ever shipped are still supported, but they now offer additional control & configurability.

Key features:

• Deploy multiple projects simultaneously.
• Multiple versions of the same server are formally supported.
• Finer grained server status reporting.
• Packaged deployed mode still supported across all connectors.
• Install third party connectors from the Eclipse marketplace or elsewhere into MyEclipse and have them work seamlessly with our server tooling.

WebSphere-specific enhancements:

• The fast in-workspace deployment mode is now the default deployment mode; it supports the deployment of all project types.
• You can now start and stop individual modules.
• MyEclipse automatically detects running WebSphere instances and provides instant access to its services and up-to-date module deployment status.

In prior versions of MyEclipse, we had legacy WebSphere connectors in the Pro edition, as opposed to the new WebSphere connectors in the Blue edition. With the unified product (read more below), we have removed our legacy WebSphere connectors in favor of the newer Blue connectors. You must have a Blue license to use WebSphere in MyEclipse.

Deployment Mode Flexibility for Tomcat App Servers

The Tomcat connector’s new deployment mode in 2015. With the “auto deployment” option, MyEclipse publishes the project to the auto deploy folder where Tomcat’s auto-deployment mechanism will detect and deploy it. This is the deployment mode used by MyEclipse 2014 and earlier versions.

If you use the “context deployment” option, MyEclipse publishes the project to the specified deploy path and adds the corresponding context entry to Tomcat’s configuration file. This is the deployment mode used by the Eclipse JEE distribution.

Custom Deployment Server

You can set up a connector to an app server that you control outside of MyEclipse using external tooling or the server’s own shortcuts. Once configured, you can deploy MyEclipse resources to the custom server just as with other servers configured in MyEclipse.

Pivotal tc Server 3.0 Support

You can now deploy to and debug against the Pivotal tc Server 3.0.

Updated TomEE Server Connector

The TomEE server connector now supports version 1.7 as well as 1.5 and 1.6.

Dashboard and Other Tools Make Tasks Easier

The MyEclipse dashboard allows you to create new projects easily or import existing projects from version control or your file system. Each dashboard section includes key project management actions and relevant documentation, giving you a jump-start on development in MyEclipse.

The MyEclipse Explorer view presents a framework-centric view of your project without losing the Java focus of the Package Explorer. The explorer includes the ability to filter resources displayed based on name, and enables easy file content search.

Coding Report

A new report is available that provides you information about how much coding time you spend and in what areas of MyEclipse. Access this report on the Metrics tab of the MyEclipse Dashboard.

Improved Dark Theme

We know many developers prefer a dark theme when coding. We made improvements to the look of our dark theme so it’s easier on the eyes. Access the new MyEclipse Dark Theme from the General>Appearance preferences. Or, access from the  icon on the main toolbar.

Built on Luna 4.4.1

From Java 8 and Lambda expressions to the much awaited ability to enable split editors, MyEclipse is built on the most recent Luna release, ready for you to take advantage of the latest features from Eclipse. To learn about some of the highlights of the Luna release, visit http://genuitec.com/luna.

Update to MyEclipse Reports

MyEclipse Reports is now based on the latest stable version of BIRT – 4.4.1. It is the automatic MyEclipse Report Web Runtime version when you create a reporting project.

Intelligent Merged Deployment

MyEclipse intelligently detects whether merged deployment can be enabled for your web project’s modules. You can now turn merged deployment on or off for each module as opposed to having to make the decision at the Web project level.

New Maven Dependencies-Only Mode

Although most older Maven projects (10.x and below) continue to work in modern versions of MyEclipse, this new mode supports the exceptions. In addition, use this new facet if you want to benefit only from Maven’s dependency management system rather than using the full Maven-based build capabilities. See Maven as Dependency Manager Only for technical details of this new mode.

Updated Spring Support

You can now add Spring 4.1 support to your projects! Our Spring-JPA and Spring-Hibernate tooling have also been updated to handle this new version.

In addition to the core Spring framework, we have updated Spring Web Flow to version 2.4.0 and Spring Security to version 3.2.5.

As always, if you use Maven for your project configuration, we’ll set up the right dependencies in your POM.

Try Upgraded Features with Integrated Upgrade Trials

MyEclipse 2015 is a unified MyEclipse product with license levels allowing you to access all MyEclipse features. Instead of downloading and installing separate products (MyEclipse Blue, MyEclipse Spring or MyEclipse Bling), the license level you purchase provides you with access to features such as advanced WebSphere and Spring, all from one product.

With the unified MyEclipse 2015, you can easily try out all features without losing your existing license setup. When you run across a feature that requires an upgrade from your current license, MyEclipse notifies you that the feature is an upgrade and provides you the opportunity to try a free 30-day upgraded license.