After a first pass and over 50 responses to the survey, we have a crop of good potential names for a final ballot. I am making a new survey to select the winners: click to vote

Note that this is not a normal vote. The committers WILL HAVE final say and their votes count much more than those of common mortals.
This is what I call algebraic democracy And the Eclipse foundation has also its word in the game as they like to have names that can be trademarked or are clear of trademarks.

I personally like JADE, TOAD, WBT, and Salamis, with Toad and Salamis yielding obviously fun project logos.

I thought for sec about the (meta style) Ajax Tools Tools (ATT) but that might be trademarked and no one picked it.

The names that made the final round are:
ADT = Ajax development Tools
AIDE = Ajax IDE
ASIF = Ajax and Scripting Integration Framework
ATF = keep it . it is better than any of the others
ATP = AJAX Tools Platform
AWDT = Ajax, Web and DHTML toolsW2T = web 2.0 tools
CAFE = Common Ajax Framework for Eclipse
CAT = Common Ajax Toolkit
EJAX = Eclipse aJAX
FAT = Framework for Ajax Tooling
JADE = JavaScript Ajax DHTML Environment
JSDDT = JavaScript and Dom Development Tools
RIAF = Rich Internet Application Framework
RWAF - Rich Web Application Framework
Salamis = The kingdom of Ajax
TAD = Tools for Ajax Development
TOAD = Tools Of Ajax Development
WBT = Web browser tools
WCDT = Web Client Development Tools.
WCT = Web Client Tools
YAAP = Yet Another Ajax Project

I met last week-end with folks (Paul and Burke) from the OpenMRS project during the Google Summer of Code mentor summit. Their project is important as it tries to provide an open source platform for managing medical records for economically dis-advantaged countries — such as African countries — and to bring their modest contributions to fight serious diseases such as AIDS.

It makes all of our work as software developers –open source or closed source– look futile and misplaced.

I found out they used a lot Eclipse BIRT and are on the lookout for a visual XForms editor to create new forms for medical records.

I thought it would be awesome if we could do some collaboration together around a visual XForms editor.

Such an editor would be open source –of course– , fit within the Visual Editor project charter and even better it would be coding for a good cause.

I am calling out for volunteers that could be interested to make something like that happen.
If member companies would want to contribute in kind or resources to help (resources are always better, unless you have a visual XForms editor for Eclipse to contribute), that would be awesome.

If you are interested, please join the ve-dev mailing list @ Eclipse.

I am proud to have been voted in as a new committer on the Visual Editor project. The project had been loosing steam lately, but thanks to community support it is slowly getting back on track.
There have been many complaints about when VE would support Callisto/Eclipse 3.3, and it is in fact that that triggered a renewed community interest. One of my first action as a new committer was a request to have our favorite web masters help out and by exerting their extremely powerful rootness to add a temporary statement on the project web page, pointing to install instructions, until I could be fully “provisioned” as a committer. (Since today I am).

The site says now:

Please note: 2007-10-03: Current official builds of the Visual Editor require Eclipse 3.2 (Callisto). The Visual Editor is migrating progressively to Eclipse 3.3 (Europa). Preliminary instructions on testing preview builds are available on the VE wiki. Thank you for your patience and supporting the project!

In that bug, Øyvind Harboe raises a very valid point:

The statement on the web-site is very conservative and it does not point towards a plan. I’m just wondering if that meets Eclipse.org’s standards. Seems like everbody wants to be an Eclipse project these days.

Is 3.3 compatibility days, weeks, months or years out?

The short answer is I do not know, but the community is working actively to find that out, and we started working on an embryonic and draft roadmap. Community folks like Eric Hecht have published builds which have been a great kick for everyone waiting for them and so did I on EasyEclipse.
And we now have a decent way to get VE installed on 3.3.
Thanks so much Eric for instigating a new life in this project!

Now the point is: when does a project meets Eclipse standards?
When there is an active community working on it? When there is frequent releases?
Tell me!

You can vote for a new name for the ATF project here.

We could be giving away 20 new unlocked iPhones, but we can’t.
Do it just for the fun!

Let me unveil a well kept secret: a gem project @ Eclipse : the ATF project.
Despite its non-descriptive weirdo name, this little sub-incubating project of the larger web tools project provides some nice stuffs:

• a fairly decent (in fact freaking awesome) JavaScript editor, pretty close to reach the holiness of the Java editor. This is not the standard basic web tools editor but a brand new advanced editor
• support to add and manage JavaScript libraries (such as Prototype, Dojo, mootols, Rico, Yui, pick your own ). It is library agnostic and friendly.
• live in-Eclipse preview of HTML and JavaScript pages in Firefox
• in-browser JavaScript debugger, integrated with the Eclipse debug framework. You can debug JavaScripts the same way you debug Java!
• in-browser DOM inspection, live snippets eval, and manipulations
• XmlHttpRequest monitoring, for Ajax troubleshooting

Part of the magic is achieved by embedding a Mozilla Firefox browser in Eclipse (aka Xulrunner), and having a Java API to control that browser. (no more status, title or location hacks madness ). The Mozilla embedding works on Windows, Mac and Linux. And it was so freaking cool, that after being piloted in the ATF project, it made it’s way as a standard SWT feature of Eclipse 3.3/Europa.

Get a taste of ATF there. Try the all in one drop, you just need to add a JVM.

Kick in the tires, file bugs, suggest new features. Bring back the fun to JavaScript coding.

So, despite the ugly name: ATF is NOT a JavaScript or Ajax framework. Well some would say that a good piece of code does not need a name. I think the opposite. Now what does ATF mean? This is your call. Let’s pick a new name! Join the fun with new names ideas here on the webtools.atf newsgroup.

I am an Eclipse wonk. I’ll be blogging about open source Eclipse. Visual Editor, Ajax toolkit and more.