Working with large numbers of projects in Eclipse and any of the Eclipse based products such as Flex Builder, ColdFusion Builder or CFEclipse can become cumbersome and become a bottle neck in a good workflow.

One of the many ways to work better within this space is to make efficient use of your navigator (or project explorer) and searching dialogs. Working sets can be used to filter search results as well as your navigator view, but constantly switching them can be a pain. Window working sets however can be a globally applied and just a few tweaks can make using them easy. Here is what I recommend!

1. Make sure you have the menu item turned on. Customize your current perspective (Window ==» Customize Perspective). Under command group availability, make sure "window working set" and "Working set manipulation" are checked.
2. Create a shortcut: Go to Window ==» Preferences ==» General ==» Keys. I prefer to use F3, since it's a continent key and I don't use its default binds ever. Sometimes the scopes can be difficult to always get right, so I choose "all editor scopes", "In Console View" and "In Windows" for the best results.
3. Make your views take advantage of "Window Working sets". The two most common usage points will be your Navigator and Search Results. In the option menus for both of these you can choose working sets from the list; however instead of separately choosing your projects per view, choose "Windows Working Set" radio button.
4. Now you can hit {F3} or what ever your chosen hot key was at any time. You can change, edit or create new working sets from one interface and all your views will obey this choice. This is fantastic if you work on multiple large projects in a single days time especially.

I Updated yesterday from an early release of Windows 7 to the retail release doing a complete wipe of my computer. After installing Flex Builder 3 I tried to do some work, yet every time I launched the program Windows 7 alerted me that I was running a program with an unknown publisher. After hitting my self in the head I released that unlike my regular Eclipse environment, Flex Builder was not using my VM but the one that is packaged. This packaged version is NOT signed.

For some reason this worked fine before; but now, not so much. Setting the [-vm c:\pathto\javaw.exe] in the eclipse.ini did not work, but changing the shortcut did work. Any insite into this is welcome!

So in short, on windows 7, force your VM to a legit installed JRE to get this pop-up message to go away if your getting it! The packaged one is not in favor with Windows 7 security!

A while ago I posted about some shortcuts I often use in Eclipse. Well this morning I found a new shortcut that I can't believe I never knew about; and while borderline, I deemed it worthy of it's own post!

ALT + UP-ARROW
ALT + DOWN-ARROW

I tend to be an ordering freak and this little gem of simplicity is way better than cutting and pasting. This short-cut key will move any line your cursor is on or any lines you have selected in the direction you press.