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by Alan Williamson.
Original Post: Official Eclipse 3.0 Faq (Eclipse Series)
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When I first looked at this book my eyes rolled at yet another Eclipse book. Seems to be the season for Eclipse with all the books arriving on the subject. Most of them are pretty dull affairs I have to say, only of real interest to those actually wanting to do something with Eclipse over and above the usual IDE requirements.
However this book was a fresh of breath air, not because its content was any different from the others (infact it covers pretty much all the same topics each of them do), but this one lives up to its title of FAQ in how its presented.
The FAQ (or Frequently Asked Questions) is a wonderful format and works very well online. It is generally a list of popular questions laid out in a manner that makes reading and locating your answer very quick. The book is laid out in exactly the same format. The table-of-contents becomes the list of questions categorized in logical groups, with 361 unique questions/answers spread throughout the whole book.
The book then becomes an interesting journey for the reader. I found myself peering into areas of Eclipse that I normally wouldn't have committed myself to reading a whole chapter on. I have learnt more on Eclipse now than I ever hoped to know and feel energised enough to even attempt my own plugin!
With this format, the authors have to get their point over very quickly as they don't have the luxury of a chapter with background information. Although in all fairness they do refer to other questions thats related.
This makes it a book that is not read linear; you are hopping all over the place and the book morphs into a reference or lookup manual as oppose to a teaching aid. I hope publishers continue this format, as they are plenty of subjects in the Java world alone that could benefit from this short, sharp and focused approach to conveying information.