Adding visuals to code editor

I was researching an eclipse plugin when I saw the following screenshot whish got me thinking.




Is there any way I could use a similiar interface when editing code.
Ideas
Perhaps use this type of interface to

• edit the called method inside the same editor as the call.
  
• show the overridden method and overriding method in the same editor. I can see all sorts of possibilities here particularly for code which includes extensive use of the template pattern as much of the code I write seems to.
  
• a call hierarchy or inheritance hierarchy using expand ,colapse and focus on similliar to the hierarchy view but all inside the editor view.
  

Now I don't claim to have thought this through but that is how ideas start.

stumbling upon

I stumbled onto this and for me it is just all too real. so I had to share it.

http://www.bigfix.com/softwaretruth/hearing-closing-statements.php

New Blog Template.

OK I have hacked up the template quite a bit. It is now a lot simpler but still essentially the same look. The biggest change was to make the blog scale horizontally. Now on my wide screen it doesn't look as silly with one little strip in the middle of the page. All of the layout has been done with Divs, not a table tag in sight.

I know many people disagree with this but after all it is my blog :)

New Features and Status Update for this Blog

OK now my google adsense adds are online. You can see them in the sidebar. I doubt I'll ever make any money from this but it is interesting to see what sortof adds appear and I might even find something of use myself. But under the adsense advertiser terms and Conditions I can't click on the adds so I'll have to find another to get to the sites if I am interested. I need to reread the Ts & Cs to check if I can publish reviews of the products advertised I can't see why I would be able to. After re-reading there doesn't seem to be a problem

Also in the sidebar is a dynamic listing on what I am listening to. The display is driven by the audioscrobbler/last.fm player which I posted about recently. Basically it just creates an image containing my recent playlist which you can include in a blog.

Google Analytics has recorded several hits on my blog already. As far as I can tell they have been completely random "next blog" kind of hits as the site doesn't even seem to be indexed by google search engine yet. Never the less it is fun to see hits from all overthe work Australia(I suspect that is just me),Canada,Dubai, Spain and US. I'll have to keep watching this and see where it takes me... I'd quite like to get section on my blog itself showing recent access stats(like country, nothing revealing about viewers) I have to say I was very impressed with the google Analytics interface.

Blogs

I'm obviously in a blogging mood tonight I have been experimenting with what I can add to my blog. I now have it setup with google adsense. Adds appear in the right column and I might even get some money if somebody clicks on them. Currently there are just google internal non-money generating adds until my site is reviewed. It will be interesting to see what the adds are for. The integration between blogger and google adsense was good but there were a few little things in the process which weren't entirely intuative and I have entered my details into google accounts about half a dozen times now. One of which was the next google service I have added to my blog. Google analytics which provide a hole heap of free reporting for uses of google adsense.

Once I had that setup and I was just sitting around waiting for somebody to actually visit my blog so that the reports would have something to report on I just started hitting the next blog button to see what was out there.

The handful of random blogs included

• A blog petitioning to save a hospital
  
• A number of pages in other languages not sure what they were about.
• trainingbudget.blogspot.com recommending a spring course I went on earlier this year and containing a lot of the same content as I may be blogging about on this blog.
• 
  

I wonder is there are any sites out there that try to cluster blogs on similar topics?

Idea

here are the 2 latest grand ideas for things I should write if only I had the time.

A suite and integrated Eclipse plugin which will do both ER Data modeling and Object modeling. Inculding the functionality of products like Case Studio or Erwin. Things like DDL generation and reverse engineering from physical data and support for metadata standards.
Also providing support for object modeling and java code generation.

Then importantly covering the missing peice of the puzzle the link between the 2 using hibernate or possibly any other ORM. This would give the ability to jump from one to the other and maintain the entire application design int he one tool.

Just an idea... maybe I'll see if I can make a start on it sometime begining with the Eclipse EMF or possible looking at the open source object modeling plugin greenuml

Eclipse quick fixes

Interesting Eclipse plugin for building Eclipse quick fixes based on regular expressions.

http://www.jave.de/eclipse/poormansquickfix/index.html


This concept might fit in well with the plugin I have been writing which includes an xml syntax definition currently used by the color coding editor and code completion.

Unfortunately this plugin doesn't have an update site so the install is slightly more work and harder to backout if it buggy.

audioscrobbler

This is really an off topic post to start the blog but that is probably going to be the way of it.

I recently rediscovered Audioscrobbler and it has improved a lot since last time I saw it. It is an open source application which includes plugins for you music player of choice itunes, WMP , winamp etc. when you listen to songs it records what you are listening to and after a while is able to find other audioscrobbler users who listen to similliar music and make recomendations for you based on their playlists.

It also includes a great interface for just searching for related music and it will create a customized radio station just for you and you can listen to it via the internet directly throught the app.

Give it a go and hopefully you'll find some new music that you enjoy and wouldn't have found other wise. You can download it from http://www.last.fm/tools/downloads/

CSS to build custom table borders.

Here is a great Article on using CSS to build custom table borders.

I started to use this to adapt the template for this blog and make it scallable. I oftend use large screens or wide screens and it has always been a pet peeve of mine that soo many web pages are designed for only a fixed width and don't take advantage of the screenspace a user might have.

First Post

This Blog is intended to contain technical content in contrast to my personal blog for hosting mainly my holiday pics and my work blog which contains company(SAS) confidential information

Much of the posting will be link revolving around Eclipse plugin development, web design and java application architecture. Topic may inculde things like Eclipse, Spring, Domain Driven Design, Dozer and web interface design.