Part II. RCP by Example

The best way to learn about Eclipse as a rich client platform is to build a rich client application. This part of the book guides you through just that. Starting with a machine completely devoid of any Eclipse functionality, we walk through setting up Eclipse for RCP development and then creating, running, debugging, and enhancing a reasonably full-featured instant messaging client application called Hyperbola. The screen shot here shows an example of the Hyperbola chat client application you will build.

The material in Part II is presented in an informal tutorial style—assume that we are sitting with you and guiding you though Hyperbola’s development. You are encouraged to follow along and do the steps described. If you would rather not follow the steps or are having difficulties, the completed code for each chapter is also available on the book’s Web site (http://eclipsercp.org). Even though the chapters are very development-oriented, the text for each chapter is complete and can be read without following the steps or looking at the supplied code.