RepreZen API Studio is now based on a newer version of Eclipse. What does it mean for API developers? Better look-and-feel and improved usability mean more time to work on the fun stuff, so you can create better APIs faster.

These are my top five productivity-boosting features introduced in recent versions of Eclipse and now available in API Studio. Let the countdown begin...

5. Copy Preferences to New Workspaces

Having multiple workspaces is a good choice while working on several independent projects - each project can have its own workspace, with its own settings and base path in the filesystem. Now, creating a new workspace with your favorite settings is easier than ever. When switching to a new workspace, just expand the “Copy Settings” and select which settings you would like to preserve in your new workspace:

📖Read more:

• Resources and the workspace
• Working Sets

4. Auto-Save “Dirty” Editors

A “dirty” editor is an editor that has unsaved changes. To keep my peace of mind and make sure that all of my changes are preserved (and won’t be lost in an accidental software crash), I have a habit of pressing “Ctrl+S” after almost every change. Now it’s not needed, as Eclipse can do it for me 😌.

While I love this option, it can potentially initiate time-consuming build operations, that’s why it’s disabled by default. But API Studio projects generally don't have automated build processes. So unless your Eclipse workspace has other projects that are set to build automatically (for example, a Java project), it's safe to enable autosave. Highly recommended!

📖Read more:

• New Features: Automatic Save of dirty editors

3. Quick-Switch Between Open Editors

 Quick Switch Editor (Ctrl+E on Windows, ⌘+E on Mac), allows us to navigate to an open file easily. It’s helpful when many editors are open at the same time. You can also filter based on the file name:

📖Read more:

• Ctrl+E command improvements

2. (Finally 🎉!) High-DPI Displays on Windows and Linux

This change is especially notable on the toolbar where, in past releases, the images looked disproportionally tiny. Now the images look much better as they are scaled proportionally to the resolution of the monitor:

There are other look-and-feel improvements, for example, better styling for the toolbar (both for Windows and Mac).

📖Read more:

• SWT provides resolution-based auto-scaling
• Improvements in the Mac default theme
• New and Noteworthy - Improved default styling for the toolbar

1. 1️⃣ 🎇 Zoom in Text Editors

Zoom-in can be especially helpful in presentation mode, e.g. while projecting your display to a bigger screen so people from the last row can still see the text. There are several ways to zoom-in or zoom-out an editor in Eclipse:

Using the Key Bindings

• Zoom in: Ctrl++ on Windows, ⌘++ on MacOS
• Zoom out: Ctrl+- on Windows, ⌘+- on MacOS

This persistently changes the font size in all editors of the same type:

You can see that I have two OAS3 files open and their text size is being changed at the same time. The text size will also change for other OAS3 files, even for those that are not opened at this time. Editors for other file types, e.g. for simple text, won’t be affected.

Using the “Pinch” Action on a Touchpad or Touchscreen

This gesture is similar to what we use on smartphones for resizing: put two fingers on the touchpad or touchscreen and move them apart or together. Those gestures only affect the current editor:

Note: If you have EditBox enabled, you might notice that the block highlighting doesn't automatically adjust to the text size as you zoom-in and zoom-out. Thankfully, there's an easy fix. Once you've adjusted the zoom level to your liking, use the toolbar button to toggle EditBox off and back on again. This will realign the block highlighting.

📖Read more:

• Commands and shortcuts to zoom in text editors
• Pinch to zoom in text editors