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The Developer’s Guide to
Eclipse-Powered Tools

2. The market for mobile apps is both
burgeoning and highly competitive —
today Apple’s App Store and the Google
Play Store each boast over 1.5 million
available mobile apps. In the battle for
mobile app mindshare, developers must
focus on speed of delivery to keep up with
an increasingly crowded market, and with
today’s mobile app development tools
becoming more powerful, developers have
a real chance to speed their processes. In
2015, the amount of developers resisting
the idea of using tools altogether has
dropped to 17% showing that they are
becoming an essential part of the agile
development programs worldwide.
No mobile app development tool is quite
as important as the integrated
development environment (IDE).
Dominating this space is the Eclipse
platform of tools, projects, and plug-ins
with about 55% of developers using it in
some way. Eclipse-powered tools are
setting the pace for mobile app
development — here we’ll take a look at
the reasons behind this trend.
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3. The Bite-Size Eclipse Overview
Eclipse is a development tool that can stand on its
own, but it is also a platform that can empower a
multitude of other essential tools. Eclipse is an
open-source platform with a base workspace built
on a small runtime kernel. Aside from the kernel,
Eclipse is entirely dependent on an ever-growing
community of plug-ins.
Although Eclipse is considered an IDE, it is capable of
providing developers with various IDEs and
platforms for developing with different languages.
Eclipse is most popular for its ability to deliver IDEs
for Java, C/C++, and PHP, which enable the extensive
set of add-on tools that support cutting-edge mobile
app development projects.
Eclipse began as a Java IDE and has gained most of
its fame for simplifying development for the most
widely used programming language. It has since
expanded to cover practically any development
challenge today.
The Eclipse environment is rivaled by other IDEs like
Intellij and NetBeans, but those platforms can’t
provide the kind of functionality and breadth of
coverage that the Eclipse environment does. The
question developers are left with is — how exactly
has Eclipse pulled so far ahead in the IDE market?
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4. The Key to Eclipse’s Dominance
Developers may be some of the most meticulous, exacting professionals in
the business world. They have specific needs and know how they like to get
work done. This is why developers love plain text editors so much — the
freedom to code how they want without distraction. However, they still
need to meet stringent release deadlines. As a result, tools are becoming
an essential part of keeping up with competitors. Eclipse is able to win IDE
market share for its ability to reconcile the need for flexibility and agility.
The open-source nature of Eclipse is the key to its flexibility. Eclipse isn’t
just about Java development anymore. Whether it’s Java, PHP, Android,
Apple, HTML5, or any other approach to mobile app coding, Eclipse can
provide the platform to empower the entire development process.
When app publishers consider adding tools to the development arsenal,
there are a few key considerations to address before moving forward. Most
wonder how long a new tool will remain in production and how often it will
be updated — even if it is backed by a major corporation. They have to
decide if it’s truly necessary or if it will lead to third-party dependency that
will hamper innovation down the road.
Eclipse is well positioned to overcome these objections.
Eclipse’s long-standing history as a leading IDE provides developers with
peace of mind as they search for a concept-to-production solution to agile
coding and mobile app creation. Regardless of specific platforms, projects,
and plug-ins chosen to use with Eclipse, developers can enjoy a
comprehensive solution that can be used from end-to-end throughout the
entire app creation process.
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5. The Advantages of an Eclipse-Powered Approach
The two key features of the baseline platform — open-source and concept-to-production coverage — are essential advantages to Eclipse-powered
development. While experienced developers can definitely manually code a mobile app, developers need to consider benefits of using Eclipse-powered tools:
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Tool simplification:
Today’s mobile users demand increasing
functionality without any performance
disruption — all at a faster pace. Making all of
this happen requires an ever-growing list of tools
— user analytics, cross-platform design, app
testing, ad network integration, performance
monitoring, and more. With the Eclipse family of
plug-ins, developers can integrate all of these
tools without having to learn entirely new set of
interfaces.
Take the Java Development Tools (JDT) project,
for example. With this package of tools,
developers can code in a one-stop shop with an
annotation processing tool (APT), Java core for
non-UI infrastructure, a debugging tool built just
for Java, a text editor, and a UI workbench for
creating a solid mobile app experience.
Innovation integration:
New technology hits the market all the time and it is
particularly important for mobile app developers to keep
up. However, simple text editors force developers to
slave over code each time new technology is released.
App publishers just don’t have time to miss the strict
release dates this market demands. Because Eclipse-
powered tools are open source, they are quickly updated
with the latest technology that can be integrated into
existing code on the fly. This time-to-market advantage is
hard to ignore.
Cheating skills:
Don’t worry, developers should still take pride in their
ability to code. However, auto-completion and other
speedy features are critical for new waves of mobile app
developers to get to market and earn every bit of
mindshare possible. By taking advantage of the shortcuts
available in Eclipse-powered tools, developers can
complete mobile apps with greater efficiency and agility.
Support for CI and app testing:
The flexible Eclipse platform has all of the plug-
ins and tools necessary for continuous
integration practices and testing at any stage of
the development process.
Refactoring simplified:
Sifting through bloated and complex lines of
code is both tedious and inefficient. Every
developer eventually needs to do some
refactoring, but with simple text editors they are
entirely on their own in the process. Eclipse-
powered tools streamline refactoring with built-
in functions for quicker code optimization. Some
of the most popular refactoring functions include
Rename, Extract Variable, Extract Method, Split
Variable Declaration, Change Method Signature,
and more.

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The Benefits of Early Adoption
Keeping up with mobile app development trends is critical. It is not enough to just hang back and be a follower once an idea or platform
has proven to be popular. Technology trail blazers, the early adopters, are the ones who hit it big with market and mind share. With new
applications and platforms that take advantage of the Eclipse IDE hitting the market, early adopters will be able to get ahead of their
competitors by tailoring these tools to their own needs.
To drive engagement in the competitive world of mobile apps, it’s important for developers to push boundaries and break from the
status quo. New tools that take Eclipse further and help developers quickly deliver against user requests, incorporate cutting-edge
technology, and keep pace with device proliferation will be extremely beneficial to organizations. By changing the pace of mobile
development, app owners have a far greater chance of beating the competition and capturing user mindshare.
Text editors give developers the freedom to do what they do best—write code. However, it’s time for developers to accept a bit of help
and use Eclipse-powered tools to supplement their own skills. Nothing will ever replace a developer’s ability to engineer a solution to a
technical challenge, but with Eclipse-powered tools, they can get them implemented quickly and ensure that their mobile app
development projects remain on-time and on-budget. From every perspective, it’s a win-win for all involved.

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About Nexacro Studio-E
Nexacro Studio-E is an Eclipse-based environment for the development of web and hybrid mobile
applications built using the Nexacro Platform. Nexaweb dramatically increases developer
productivity by supporting multiple platforms from a common source code and by providing
WYSIWYG screen design capability and drag-and-drop automation of most common tasks.
With the ability to create HTML5, hybrid, and native applications, Nexacro provides flexibility to
your development efforts so that you can take advantage of the portability of HTML5 or the
deeper hardware integration and higher performance afforded by hybrid and native approaches.
Nexacro empowers your development team by allowing you to build mobile and web applications
for multiple platforms from a single codebase. Our approach minimizes the effort required to
support the full range of devices in your user population and enables easy integration with your
existing enterprise applications and data repositories so that you can focus on what is important —
delivering for your users.
Single Codebase
Nexaweb allows you to build
mobile applications for
multiple platforms from a
single codebase.
Our approach minimizes the
requirements needed to
support the full range of
devices and enables easy
integration with your existing
enterprise applications so
that you can focus on what’s
most important — delivering
for your users.
Multi-Layout Manager
MLM provides a WYSIWYG
tool that allows screens of
different dimensions and
resolutions to be created
rapidly by reusing screen
elements.
Screen elements can be
resized, rearranged or
hidden based on the desired
appearance and functionality
for a particular screen size.
Data Binding
Nexaweb provides a variety
of tools and techniques for
connecting data in existing
enterprise data stores to
mobile applications.
Data binding provides a simple
way to associate form fields
and controls with data,
accelerating development
by simplifying data retrieval
and updates.

8. About Nexaweb
Nexaweb provides software and
services for the development of
enterprise-class mobile, tablet, and
web applications. Nexaweb was
founded in 2000, offering tools and
enterprise to develop web and, later,
mobile applications for the enterprise.
Today, Nexaweb has more than 2,500
customers around the world across a
range of industries.
Nexaweb Inc.
1 New England Executive
Office Park, Suite 205
Burlington, MA 01803
Tel: 781-345-5500
Fax:781-345-5501
www.nexaweb.com
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