Some Improvements and New Features in Liferay IDE 2.0

Hi, my name is Kuo Zhang(kuo.zhang@liferay.com), and I'm working in the Liferay-IDE team in Dalian, China.
I'd like to introduce to you several new features and improvements added in Liferay IDE 2.0.
 

Improved new project wizard

Instead of listing all types of plugins, the wizard organizes the plugin types via a popup list, which makes the wizard more compact, and easier to add new types  of plugins in the future.
 
 
 
The plugin description has been moved here.  Also, there are links in this dialog that opens the offical documentation for each plugin type.
 
 
 
For portlet and service builder plugin projects, the wizard allows you to choose if the sample code included in the project templeates are added to the new project.  If you don't add the sample code, then all of the entries normally added in the project descriptor files( eg: portlet.xml, liferay-portlet.xml, liferay-display.xml and service.xml) won't be added.  Also, if you want to add a new portlet right after a portlet project is created, now there is a convenivent way to do that, check the "Lanch New Portlet Wizard after project is created".  These options will be sticky, in that the wizard will remember your previou choices the next time you use the wizard.
 
 
 

Service.xml editor improvements

 
Two actions were added in the service.xml editor, "Add default columns" and "Add sample entity".
 
Default columns contain, primary keys, group instance, audit fields.  A sample entity is composed of default columns, order and find methods.
 
 
 
Properties encoding improvements
 
Eclipse uses ISO-8859-1 as the default encoding charset of  XXX.properties files, while Liferay uses UTF-8 as default for some properties files( resource bundle files and language properties files).  A new feature has been added that can detect those files and use UTF-8 as default when you're creating them.
 
 
Also, a new validator has been added that puts warning markers on those non-default encoding properties files and provides the fixes.
 
 
 
 
There are two ways to fix that: 
1) right click the file or the project and choose encode the only file or all non-default encoding properties files to default.
 
 
 
2) right click the marker in Eclipse Markers Viewer, a quick fix is provided, right click the marker.
 
 
 
 
Tips: specific regular expressions are supported, "_" in resource bundle, "_" and "*" in language properties.
For instance, <resource-bundle>Foo_</resource-bundle> points to Foo_en.properties, Foo_zh.properties if they exist.
<language-properties>Language*.properties</language-properties> can point to Language_en.properties, Language_zh.properties if they exist.
Blogues
Hi Kuo,

Nice to see these striking features of IDE 2.0. May the community know when it will be officially released so that we can try it out in the development environment.

Ahamed Hasan
Author, Liferay Cookbook
http://mpowerglobal.com/download-cookbook