Am Dienstag, 21. Oktober 2003 07:27 schrieb Sergey Smirnov: > > ..... > > In this area, Struts Studio has to compete > > with several full-featured IDEs (including Eclipse, probably) > > being around, and unfortunately, it's not fit for serving as a > > replacement yet. > > Since version 5.0, Exadel Struts Studio is based on Eclipse platform. > So, if you have the Eclipse as your primary java IDE, you do not need > to have separate Struts IDE to work with specific Struts artifacts. > Struts Studio is available as a plugin for Eclipse, or as a stand > alone IDE based on Eclipse.
This definitely is interesting news - how comes I didn't stumble over this somewhere before? As I see, Struts Studio 5.0 was released on October, 6th when I was on vacation in the Netherlands, but anyhow, I didn't see much press about it still. Combining it with Eclipse is a very clever choice IMHO, as it would fill a definite gap there. Considering the standalone IDE (my version is 4.6 CE, still): I like it in spite of its limitations (but what to expect from a Community release anyway?), and I definitely like its clear GUI design, apart from the visual appoach in general. IIRC I even used Struts Studio as an example to show non- believers from the Microsoft fraction that modern Java/Swing applications are neither slow nor ugly-looking in comparison. Leaves for one thing, not only targeted at Exadel, but Struts- supporting IDE developers in general: in practice, Struts and Tiles are a nearly perfect match, especially when it comes to complex page designs. In Struts 1.1, you can seamlessly specify Tiles definitions (tiles-defs.xml) as targets for your Actions in struts-config.xml. This is just *great*, period. There is another approach to Tiles in combination with Struts: inserting Tiles definitions in JSP pages. This also works, but you lose one of the major benefits of Tiles, and that is: abstract layout definition and definition layout inheritance, in a single, central XML file. Now it may be that Cedric Dumoulin has a website where most parts don't work as expected ;), but the framework he created saves so much time and solves so many everyday problems that it should be weighted up in gold. This is especially true when combined with Struts: Action targets may also be Tiles definitions. In practice, we make heavy use of tiles-defs.xml and layout inheritance. But I was to talk about tool support. Now: as I said, Struts 1.1 can use Tiles definitons coming from tiles-defs.xml as a replacement for JSP pages. Actually, 99% of our pages referred to in struts-config.xml are nowadays based on Tiles refernces. Unfortunately, most visual tools don't honor this or mistake Tiles references for JSP pages. IIRC, Struts Studio did, but in 4.6 at least: it properly recognized a reference to a Tiles definition, but when right-clicking on the icon, it didn't open tiles-defs.xml though there was a menu item stating otherwise. Do 4.7 or 5.0 do so? For me, it would just suffice if the IDE properly recognized that the Action's target was not a JSP, but a Tiles definition instead, showing the reference in the visual editor as if it had been made to a JSP, and when clicking on a Tiles reference there, it clearly would suffice to just open tiles-defs.xml in dumb mode. Goodness. I could say so much more on all these matters, but it's already late around here now, and I'll have to answer another guy's most urgent question on another list, too. Summing it up: I personally like Struts Studio and other good IDEs, too, and if anything I may attribute helps or makes things better in the end, I'm right here. But for now, I really have to write another mail before I may finally go to bed. -- Chris. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
