Eclipse plugin: AutoComplete as it should be

Question

I have a problem, with multiple possible solutions.

I'm doing a Computer Sience study and I'm working as an intern at the moment. My assignment is to make a business application for Android & iOS. I've been working for 2 years with Visual studio 2010 now, Xcode is rather simular so that's no biggy, Eclipse on the other hand is not as what I'm used to, I'm not saying it's bad. I have enjoyed Eclipse so far but now i'm constantly using Xcode and Eclipse

Now hold on there before you answer! I know there is an autocomplete in Eclipse but it will only pop after you push Ctrl + Space or after one of the maximum of four Auto activition triggers is, well, triggered.

So my question is:

Is there any tool that does trigger auto complete after every keystroke or something? I tried looking at making my own Eclipse plugin but it was way to hard with zero knowlegde about the Eclipse API, although tutorials considering the Auto Complete features are welcome! (they should cover classes like ContentAssistCommandAdapter)

Thanks in advance!

Solution

The delay between keystroke and pop-up is configurable. So, as an alternative to a plug-in, you can adjust the autocomplete settings to pop-up after a shorter period of time, such as 1/10th of a second.

Eclipse preferences ->
  Java ->
    Editor ->
      Content Assist -> 
        Enable Auto Activation
        Auto activation delay (ms)

(showing Mac OX 10.6, running Eclipse "Indigo" release, but the option has been around forever):

Comments

[PherricOxide]

Sweet, that's so much nicer than pressing ctrl+spacebar all the time.

[jefflunt]

I guess I just got used to ctrl+spacebar. :)

[Or Gal]

yeah!!! and i thought eclipse was lame... why dont they put that in the default. delay=50 and triggers = .abcdefg...z works great.

[Admin]

Great, this is the one thing I couldn't stand in Eclipse. I may not have to switch to IDEA (which has bads than goods for me) thanks to you.

[jefflunt]

@OrGal - Eclipse is an old codebase, and my guess as to why this isn't the default is because it's just been this way for years and years. Also, when Eclipse was new it was commonly running on machines that were <1GHz single-core processors, and auto-complete wasn't exactly the fastest thing in the world at the time, and therefore not always desirable.

[saurabheights]

Copy it to your eclipse preferences: .abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ