how do we get the visual editor tab to appear?

General
1

There seems to be no way to launch the visual editor, and I cant find any instructions on how to “install” it. There is no visual editor tab in any of our vaadin java classes in the ecilpse source edit window.

We have all the Vaadin features installed in eclipse Helios, ie.

  1. book of vaadin (no idea where this goes or how to access it)
    2 .Vaadin eclipse integration (1.3.1.2)
  2. Vaadin visual editor (experimental) 0.6.0.2

We have an existing vaadin project (which was originaly created with a maven vaadin archtype), which I have just imported into my ecilpse workspace.

The project compiles fine, and runs on the local tomcat no problem. However, doing a complex layout by hand is hard, when everything is done “blind”. Its like going back to the days of devloping with emacs.

Stuff tried:

  1. ticked the vaadin facet for the project, and restarted eclipse. This doesnt seem to do anything.
  2. opened each of the vaadin classes, and looked for a tab. None.
  3. Looked for a vaadin perspective or View - there are none.

Our main class extends com.vaadin.Application.
Our other classes extend VerticalLayout etc.

This is in the projects pom:

	<dependency>
		<groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>
		<artifactId>vaadin</artifactId>
		<version>6.4.4</version>
	</dependency>

there is also a big section for jetty, which says it can be run with the maven goal jetty:run.

We dont use jetty,we have a single tomcat for all our projects webapps (there are three, and only one of them is vaadin - we dont want to run three jetties, and also our target env is tomcat so we dont see any reason to not use that).

Any ideas how we “install” or run the visual Editor?

Many thanks!

2

The Visual Editor works on classes extending CustomComponent that have a specific structure (certain methods and fields tagged with the @AutoGenerated annotation). Parts of the class not tagged with @AutoGenerated can be modified by the user (apart from the superclass). Modifying autogenerated methods may make the file unparseable by the Visual Editor.

To create such a class, use New… → Vaadin CustomComponent (composite). When such a class is created, it is automatically “tagged” in Eclipse to use the Visual Editor (Eclipse metadata for which editor to use by default for the class). If you have e.g. checked out the project from version control, you may have to use Open With… → Vaadin Editor from the context menu on the file.

3

Perfect, problem solved - the visual editor works well with classes generated in this way.

Many thanks.