Multiple screens are a real productivity booster for every developer: it extends your ‘real estate’ and allows you to have more things visible all the time. Personally I always have a dual screen system in use. Well, except when I’m traveling. But I wish I would have it there too! Eclipse started to support the multiscreen environment already a while back. The easiest thing is to use the menu Window > New Window:
This simply duplicates my main IDE window. Now I can move that window to my screen. That way I can use another perspective in that new window, or just edit a different set of sources files there.
Another great usage of a separate eclipse IDE window is using it to debug a multicore device or multiple boards the same time: you have everything visible without the need to switch views.
That reminds me about another frequent question I receive: how to edit the same source file on different lines the ‘same’ time? There is a solution for this: I use the menu Window > New Editor. Alternatively I use the context menu on the tab of the source file:
Now you have a second instance of my source file. Drag&Drop the tab to the side of the editor view (or the bottom) and you can have a side by side:
Ok, having a separate eclipse IDE window is a great thing. But what if I just want to have a single view on my other monitor (instead the whole IDE)? Yes, that’s possible :-). It is simple not that easy to find. I expected this for the editor view. But darn, this is not in the eclipse version of MCU10.2. Not yet. The good news is: the next eclipse release supports detached editor windows.
But you there is support for it in the other CodeWarrior/eclipse views. Use the context menu on the view tab to detach the view:
This transforms the view into a detached window which can be freely moved around: that way I can pick and choose the views I want to move to my other screen:
To get the window back to its IDE tiling place, simply select the menu again and remove the detached flag:
Happy multi-screening 🙂
Wow, nice tips! I shall be twice as productive now 😉
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