If you’ve never used an IDE, the Eclipse interface can be a bit daunting. Worse, if you’ve never used an IDE and have never programmed in Java, the Java-centric nature of Eclipse can make the initial screen downright intimidating.
Fortunately, the basic Eclipse philosophy is very logical and rather simple. In this chapter, we will walk through the startup process, explain the overall layout of Eclipse, and prepare Eclipse for PHP development. In particular, we will cover the following components and see how to maximize their use:
- Perspectives
- Views
For the next two chapters, we will use an example of an ‘animal shelter’ website. Most shelter websites have an inventory of pets available for adoption. We will create a sample web application to show this inventory.