Preferences - General

This page is used to control various General options.

Default Form Size X & Y

These preferences control the default form size used for any window or dialog created by Designer.

Grid step

This preference determines the grid step used in null/absolute layouts, SWT FormLayout and Swing SpringLayout.

Use grid when shift is

This preference controls whether the grid is used when the shift key is pressed or unpressed.

Direct edit mode

This preference determines how direct edit mod is invoked. The default is to Alt+click on a widget once it's selected. Additional choices include single-clicking and double-clicking on the widget. A final option is provide that causes direct edit mode to be suppressed in favor of opening the important features dialog when the widget is double-clicked on.

Automatically activate direct edit for new components

This preference controls whether direct edit mode is automatically invoked when a new component is added to the window. When this option is enabled, it makes it easy to immediately set the text label on a widget as soon as it is created.

Highlight containers without borders

This preference determines whether Designer draws a dotted rectangle around borderless Composites and JPanels.

Hide grid dots

This preference determines grid dots are suppressed when moving or sizing a widget.

Use palette scrollbar

This preference determines whether the component palette will have a scrollbar.

Show platform widgets in Choose Bean dialogs

This preference determines whether platform widgets (i.e., widgets in the org.eclipse, javax.swing or java.awt hierarchies) are shown in the Choose Bean dialogs.

Add ResourceManager class to existing project as necessary

This preference determines whether the ResourceManager class is added to the project any time it is needed.

Suppress version warnings

This preference controls whether Designer shows a version warning when there is a mismatch between the version of Designer you are using and the version of Eclipse you are using. In general, a version of Designer built for Eclipse 3.0 will not work with Eclipse 3.1 and vice versa. In some situations, a newer milestone or integration build will work with the latest Designer build, so this preference gives you the ability to suppress the unnecessary and distracting warning in those cases. Be warned, however, that using Designer in a mismatched Eclipse version may result in unpredictable behavior.

Enable diagnostic checking

This preference controls whether diagnostic checking is turned on. Diagnostic checking traps certain types of code generation errors. Diagnostic mode is intended to flag differences between the source that exists and the source as recreated by the Eclipse parser. Normally, the two will match exactly, but syntactical differences or problems in the source (even minor ones) will cause a diagnostic failure (this is intentional). In general, you should not turn this option on unless asked to for some reason by Instantiations technical support.

Show Debug Info in Console

This preference controls whether debugging info is written to the Java console window..