Designer is based on Eclipse technology. This open source technology is actively supported by more than 60 leading companies (such as IBM*, HP*, Intel*, SAP, Fujitsu*, and Oracle) and by thousands of other developers throughout the commercial industry and the academic world.
With Designer based on Eclipse, you receive the following benefits:
Published, well-documented, and supported APIs frequently used across the industry.
An underlying model that integrates well with any plug-in.
A rich, advanced UI.
Capability to fully and easily extend our product in the future.
Better integration and leveraging of other applications.
Open source as the basic framework.
You can install Novell® tools into any Eclipse-based framework.
Out-of-box tools (Java editor, debugger, JUnit, ANT, CVS integration) that are free if you want to access them (and other tools) within the Designer.
Cross-platform benefits of Java, but native performance and native look of the platform.
Quick access to meaningful tools.
A framework that quickly picks up entirely new capabilities contributed by a larger community.
Instead of focusing on tools, developers are able to concentrate on providing quality content and not spend so much time on the plumbing, debugging, and fixing the framework.