Creating a New Perspective

This tutorial creates a new perspective that is based on combining

Declare new Perspective

Add the following XML snippet to your plugin.xml:

<extension
         point="org.eclipse.ui.perspectives">
      <perspective
            class="tutorial.PerspectiveFactory1"
            id="tutorial.perspective1"
            name="tutorial.perspective1"/>
   </extension>

The plugin.xml editor's extension tab should now be similar to the following (provided you did the last two tutorials):

Create a Perspective Factory class

PerspectiveFactory1
package tutorial;

import org.eclipse.ui.IPageLayout;
import org.eclipse.ui.IPerspectiveFactory;

public class PerspectiveFactory1 implements IPerspectiveFactory {

	public void createInitialLayout(IPageLayout layout) {
		layout.createFolder("left", IPageLayout.LEFT, 0.2f, IPageLayout.ID_EDITOR_AREA);;
		layout.createFolder("right", IPageLayout.RIGHT, 0.6f, IPageLayout.ID_EDITOR_AREA);;
		layout.createFolder("bottom", IPageLayout.BOTTOM, 0.8f, IPageLayout.ID_EDITOR_AREA);;
		layout.createFolder("top", IPageLayout.TOP, 0.6f, IPageLayout.ID_EDITOR_AREA);;
	}

}

Create the Perspective Extensions

See the 4 Example of extending an existing perspective tutorial on how to create Perspective extensions.
Add the following xml snippet to the plugin.xml.

<extension
         point="org.eclipse.ui.perspectiveExtensions">
      <perspectiveExtension targetID="tutorial.perspective1">
         <view
               id="org.eclipse.ui.views.ResourceNavigator"
               relationship="stack"
               relative="right"/>
         <view
               id="org.eclipse.ui.views.TaskList"
               relationship="stack"
               relative="top"/>
         <view
               id="org.eclipse.ui.views.BookmarkView"
               relationship="stack"
               relative="left"/>
         <view
               id="org.eclipse.ui.views.ProblemView"
               relationship="stack"
               relative="bottom"/>
      </perspectiveExtension>
   </extension>

Run the application.

Create a new Application Launcher by doing the following:

  • Right click on your new plugin and select Run As > Eclipse Application.
  • Your view should open up and you can click you button (which does nothing currently).
  • Close the intro page.
  • Select menu item: Window > Open Perspective > Other
  • Select tutorial.perspective1

The workbench should now look similar to the following image:


perspective.gif (image/gif)
perspectivedec.gif (image/gif)
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