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Eclipse Tools for Silverlight (Eclipse4SL): now for Mac developers

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One more step for the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight (Eclipse4SL) project: the Customer Technology Preview (CTP) of Eclipse4SL with support for Macintosh is being delivered at MIX09, Microsoft’s conference for Web developers, designers, business and digital marketing professionals. With this plug-in, Mac developers using Eclipse can develop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) using the Silverlight platform.

If you’re new to Eclipse4SL, here’s a quick recap: “The Eclipse tools for Silverlight project, aka eclipse4SL , is an Eclipse plug-in that enables developers to use the Eclipse IDE to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform. Announced in October of last year, the project is led by Soyatec , an IT solutions provider based in France & China, and also an Eclipse Foundation member (Yves Yang, Soyatec President). Microsoft provides funding and architectural guidance (in particular my colleagues Vijay Rajagopalan and Stève Sfartz ) ” (read the full introduction at Eclipse and Silverlight, another interoperability journey has begun)

The CTP not only enables support for the development experience on a Mac but it also includes many new features also available for the Windows version. To get the plug-in go to http://www.eclipse4sl.org/download/.

  • Watch the demo for a quick walkthrough:

The demo is also posted on Youtube and MSN Video.

If you are attending MIX09, I encourage you to go to Vijay Rajagopalan’s session “Build Applications on the Microsoft Platform Using Eclipse, Java, Ruby and PHP! ” (Friday, March 20, 10:45 AM-12:00 PM).

Vijay will give an overview of how Microsoft has delivered multiple technologies that focus on interoperability with non-Microsoft and open source technologies.

And of course he will also show the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight along with other interoperability scenarios, like combinations of Java, Ruby and PHP with the Azure Services Platform and the use of claims-based identity in support of heterogeneous identity systems.

Going back to the Eclipse4SL plug-in, let me share a few screenshots showing the new features:

  • Eclipse4SL on Mac, overview: the Project explorer, the Silverlight rendering surface, the advanced XAML code editor, the Controls Palette
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  • Code completion in the XAML editor
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  • Code generation from the XAML editor, to generate the C# event handlers
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  • Code generation in the C# editor
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Finally, while the Eclipse4SL plug-in brings Silverlight development capability to Eclipse, it also preserves the project structure to retain compatibility with other Microsoft tools (Visual Studio and Expression Blend) enabling collaboration between Eclipse developers (Java, PHP, etc…), .NET developers, and designers:

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Finally, if you have feedback, join the conversation at http://www.eclipse4sl.org/community/

Jean-Christophe Cimetiere - Sr. Technical Evangelist

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2009
    Microsoft also announced that Soyatec, a France-based IT solutions provider and Eclipse Foundation member,

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2009
    http://blogs.msdn.com/jccim/archive/2009/03/18/eclipse-tools-for-silverlight-eclipse4sl-now-for-mac-developers.aspx

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2009
    In October 2008 , when Microsoft announced the general availability of Silverlight 2.0, and, as part

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2009
    Petru ne-a vărsat noutățile anunțate în prima zi la MIX09 (Silverlight 3, Expression Blend 3, ASP.NET

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2009
    Well, it came as no surprise that interoperability was a big part of the discussion at MIX09… at the

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2009
    Well, it came as no surprise that interoperability was a big part of the discussion at MIX09… at the

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2009
    互操作性毫无悬念的成为MIX09的重头戏。当然无论何时谈论云计算时互操作性总是关键考量。 一些这方面的课程： “ Build Applications on the Microsoft Platform

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2009
    I'm not a fan of MAC but making Eclipse Tools for Silverlight available for MAC developers is too generous.