I’ve been a long time user of Eclipse, but also a critic of SWT – the UI toolkit that Eclipse uses. While Eclipse has always been a very productive tool on OS X, SWT has always lagged a bit behind other platforms. But the great thing about Eclipse 3.5, and SWT in general, is that it is now using Cocoa instead of Carbon. Additionally, the SWT guys have paid attention to a lot of little details, such as sheets and Mac-looking drag and drop indicators to name a few. There’s a lot that’s gone into this SWT release that makes me rethink my position on Swing.

One other thing to point out is that the Eclipse 3.5 release candidates are friggin’ snappy as hell. Startup times on all three platforms are very good and responsiveness is simply better overall. This is a release I’m really looking forward to.