Question

is it possible to have links on the welcome page which point to defined commands and for example, launch an dialog?

I am thinking of having a welcome page, pointing out the steps what to do first, like:

1) change language (click here)
2) set up database connection (click here)
3) start working (click here)

“click here” should be a link to call the actual dialog to set things up. I am using Eclipse with the command style menu.

Grateful for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You can run jface actions from the welcome page like this (in the introContent.xml)

<link 
label="System Configuration" 
url="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/runAction?pluginId=org.eclipse.ui.internal&#38;class=org.eclipse.ui.internal.OpenPreferencesAction">
   <img src="config.png" alt="System Configuration"/>
   <text>Current system configuration.</text>
</link>

if your intro page is in XHTML. The encoded ampersand & is quite a common pitfall. You can also call your own implemented action class (not a predefined one from org.eclipse.ui.*), but you should then implement the IIntroAction like this

public class YourPreferencesAction extends OpenPreferencesAction implements IIntroAction {

    @Override
    public void run(IIntroSite site, Properties params) {
        final IIntroPart introPart = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getIntroManager().getIntro(); 
        PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getIntroManager().closeIntro(introPart);  
        run();
    }

}

where you close the intro page and call some method you would like to have executed, in this case run(). Your actions class should in all cases inherit from org.eclipse.jface.Action.