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| <TITLE>Customizing a product</TITLE> |
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| <h3>Customizing a product</h3> |
| <p>There are many customizable aspects of a product, such as its splash screen, |
| about dialog text, window icons, etc. Most of these customizations are defined |
| in the contribution to the <a href="../reference/extension-points/org_eclipse_core_runtime_products.html"><b>org.eclipse.core.runtime.products</b></a> |
| extension point.</p> |
| <p> |
| Let's look at how some of the more common customizable elements are defined.</p> |
| <h3>About dialogs</h3> |
| <p>The platform "about" dialog is shown whenever the user selects |
| |
| <a class="command-link" href='javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.help.aboutAction")'> |
| <img src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/command_link.png"> |
| <b>Help > About</b></a> |
| |
| in the workbench menu. </p> |
| <p><img src="images/about.png" alt="About dialog" border="0" ></p> |
| <p>The upper part of the about dialog shows product level information while the |
| lower part details the features (if any) and plug-ins installed. The |
| feature details (branding if you will) are supplied using<b> about.ini</b>, <b>about.properties</b> and <b>about.html</b> |
| files in the plug-in associated with the feature. This |
| information is displayed when the user requests feature details and selects a |
| particular feature.</p> |
| <p>The product branding (top half of the dialog) is specify by extension properties |
| that describe the text and images that are shown in this dialog. |
| For example, the following extract from the Eclipse Platform product declaration.</p> |
| <pre> <property |
| name="aboutText" |
| value="%aboutText"/> |
| <property |
| name="aboutImage" |
| value="icons/eclipse_lg.png"/> |
| </product></pre> |
| <ul> |
| <li><b>aboutText</b> specifies the text to show in the about dialog</li> |
| <li><b>aboutImage</b> specifies an image that should be used in the about dialog. Large |
| images will be shown by themselves, and smaller images will be shown along with the about |
| text.</li> |
| </ul> |
| <p>See <b><a href="../reference/api/org/eclipse/ui/branding/IProductConstants.html">IProductConstants</a></b> |
| for more information about these properties. |
| </p> |
| <h3>Window images</h3> |
| <p>A 16x16 pixel color image can be used to brand windows created by the |
| product. It will appear in the upper left hand corner of product |
| windows. It is specified in the <b>windowImage</b> attribute in the |
| products extension definition. Alternatively, the <b>windowImages</b> attribute |
| can be used to describe an array of images of different sizes that should be used in the |
| upper left hand corner.</p> |
| <pre> <property |
| name="windowImages" |
| value="icons/eclipse.png,icons/eclipse32.png"/></pre> |
| <p>The <b>windowImages</b> property supercedes the <b>windowImage</b> property if |
| both are specified.</p> |
| <h3>Welcome page</h3> |
| <p>Products using the Eclipse 2.1 welcome page mechanism can specify the name and location |
| of their welcome page file in the <b>welcomePage</b> property.</p> |
| <pre> <property |
| name="welcomePage" |
| value="$nl$/welcome.xml"/></pre> |
| <p>Use of this property is |
| now discouraged in favor of the <b><a href="../reference/extension-points/org_eclipse_ui_intro.html">org.eclipse.ui.intro</a></b> |
| extension point. See <a href="ua_intro.htm">Welcome/Intro support</a> for more |
| detail about the new welcome/intro mechanisms.</p> |
| <h3><a name="preferences"></a>Preferences defaults</h3> |
| |
| <p>The <b>preferenceCustomization</b> property can be used to specify a file containing |
| default preference values for the product.</p> |
| <pre> <property |
| name="preferenceCustomization" |
| value="plugin_customization.ini"/></pre> |
| <p>This file is a <b>java.io.Properties</b> format file. |
| Typically this file is used to set the values for preferences that are published |
| as part of a plug-in's public API. That is, you are taking a risk if you |
| refer to preferences that are used by plug-ins but not defined formally in the |
| API. </p> |
| <h3>Splash screens</h3> |
| <p>The product splash screen is specified in the <tt>config.ini</tt> which is |
| located underneath the product's <tt>configuration</tt> directory. The <b>osgi.splashPath</b> property |
| in this file describes places to search for a file called <b>splash.bmp</b>. |
| The <strong>osgi.splashLocation </strong>property identifes a complete and |
| exact path to the splash screen file to use. Specifying a splash path allows |
| for locale specific splash screens to be used as the given search path can |
| indicate several plug-ins or fragments to search as well as <code>$nl$</code> style paths. |
| See the |
| platform |
| SDK's <tt>config.ini</tt> file |
| for a complete description of properties that can be configured in this file. |
| The image should be supplied in 24-bit color BMP format (RGB format) and should |
| be approximately 500x330 pixels in size.</p> |
| <p>The location, size, and color of the progress bar and progress message shown |
| in the splash screen during startup can be configured using the properties |
| <b>startupProgressRect</b>, <b>startupMessageRect</b>, and |
| <b>startupForegroundColor</b>. See |
| <b><a href="../reference/api/org/eclipse/ui/branding/IProductConstants.html">IProductConstants</a></b> |
| for more information about these properties. Note that by default, no progress |
| will be reported at startup. To enable startup progress reporting, set the following |
| preference to <b>true</b>, for example in the preference customization file: |
| <b><a href="../reference/api/org/eclipse/ui/IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.html#SHOW_PROGRESS_ON_STARTUP">IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.SHOW_PROGRESS_ON_STARTUP</a></b></p> |
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