Welcome Pages

Welcome pages are used to familiarize the user with a given aspect of the workbench.

Default Welcome Page

Each feature can contribute a welcome page. This is done by including a  welcomePage attribute in the about.ini file in the sub-directory of the feature's plug-in.

welcomePage = $nl$/welcome.xml

The value of the welcomePage attribute is an XML-like file defining the welcome page.
The file has the following format:

<welcomePage> tag with 

  1. an optional title attribute
  2. an optional format attribute
  3. an optional <intro> tag
  4. 0 or more <item> tags

The format tag can have a value of "wrap" or "nowrap". If the format attribute is "wrap", the text within the Welcome Editor will be wrapped to fit the size of its window. Note that line breaks within text will be preserved when wrapping unless paragraph (<p>) tags are used. If the format attribute is not specified, the default value of "nowrap" will be used.

The intro and item tags can contain the following

  1. Text (with line breaks preserved)
  2. Paragraph (<p>) tags to indicate which text should be wrapped.

    Text between <p> tags will be treated as one continuous line (i.e., line breaks within the <p> text will be "soft"). The <p> tag only applies when format = "wrap". If format = "nowrap", paragraph tags will be ignored.

  3. Bold (<b>) tags
  4. Action (<action>) tags containing the following attributes

    pluginId (the id of the plug-in containing the action)

    class (the qualified name of the action class to instantiate and run)

  5. Help topic (<topic>) tags containing the following attributes

    id (the id of the infoset to show in the help viewer)

    href (optional - a valid help topic URL contained in the specified infoSet and having the following format:  
    /pluginID/path_to_document
    )

Note that text between the start and end tags for actions and help topics will appear as a highlighted link.

Below is an example welcome page. The text for the second item will be wrapped.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<welcomePage 
    title="Eclipse Platform"
    format = "wrap">

<intro>This page will help familiarize you with the Eclipse Workbench.
To get started, read the sections below and click on the related links. </intro>

<item><b>Installed Features </b>
To find out more about the features installed in your workbench, choose
<action pluginId="org.eclipse.ui"
   class="org.eclipse.ui.internal.QuickStartAction">Help > Welcome...</action>
and select the feature you are interested in.</item>

<item><b>Perspectives, views and editors </b>
<p>A window contains one or more perspectives. A perspective consists of views (e.g. Navigator)
and editors for working with your resources.
The shortcut bar at the far left of the window allows you to open new perspectives and move
between perspectives that are already open. The perspective you are currently working with
is shown in the title of the window and in the shortcut bar as a pushed-in icon.</p></item>

<item><b>Configuring your perspectives</b>
You can move views and editors around the workbench by dragging their titlebars. You can
also add more views to your current perspective by using Window > Show View.
To reset the perspective to its original state, choose
<action pluginId="org.eclipse.ui"
   class="org.eclipse.ui.internal.ResetPerspectiveAction">Window > Reset Perspective</action>.
Once you have arranged your perspective, you can save it using Window > Save Perspective As....
You can customize the views, perspectives and New menu operations that show up for
your perspective. To do this choose
<action pluginId="org.eclipse.ui"
   class="org.eclipse.ui.internal.EditActionSetsAction">Window > Customize Perspective...</action> .
A view can additionally be converted into a Fast View by dragging it to the shortcut bar (at the
far left of the window). </item>

<item><b>Learn more </b>
To learn more you can browse the
<topic id="/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/toc.xml">Workbench User Guide</topic>.</item>

</welcomePage>

Copyright IBM Corp. and others 2000, 2002.