Yelotofu

As a generalist I usually have to open multiple applications just to get work done; Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks/Image Ready, VS2005 and all major browsers are but a few apps in my developer toolbox I use frequently. Having multiple desktop applications open at the same time makes ctrl-tabbing frustrating—killing productivity. Development tools are usually very memory intensive too, so the more you have open the slower your system gets.

I love the Eclipse platform and the way you could extend core functionality via plugins. For several months now I have been using the Apatana plugin for Eclipse which adds better support for CSS, (X)HTML, JavaScript and a few of the latest platforms such as Adobe AIR and iPhone.

Eclipse is platform independent as it’s built on the Java Runtime environment. So theoretically if you have a team of developers with different OS taste you could even share project settings.

I’m currently running Eclipse IDE 3.3 with the following plugins:

• The Aptana plugin
• Aptana Radrails
• Subclipse
• Adobe Flex Builder
• PDT (PHP Development Tools)
• WST (Web Standard Tools)

I don’t ctrl+tab as much now but Eclipse does get pretty sluggish at times, which could be a downer if you have a slow system.