---
title: Support for the Eclipse IDE
order: 3
layout: page
---

[[intro.eclipse]]
= Support for IDEs

While Vaadin is not bound to any specific IDE, and you can in fact easily use it
without any IDE altogether, we provide special support for the Eclipse IDE, IntelliJ IDEA, and the NetBeans IDE, which have become the most used environment for Java development.

An official Vaadin plug-in is available for the Eclipse and NetBeans IDEs.
It helps in:

* creating new Vaadin projects,

* creating custom themes,

* creating custom client-side widgets,

* downloading add-ons from the Vaadin directory, and

* easily upgrading to a newer version of the Vaadin library.

Availability of the features depends on the IDE.
The ultimate edition of IntelliJ IDEA comes with built-in support for Vaadin.

*_Vaadin Designer_* is a commercial plug-in available for the Eclipse IDE and IntelliJ IDEA.
It enables visual editing of declarative designs that you can use in your applications.
See <<dummy/../../../designer/designer-overview#designer.overview, "Vaadin Designer">> for more information.

Using the Vaadin plug-in is the recommended way of installing Vaadin for development.
Installing the IDEs and the plug-ins is covered in <<dummy/../../../framework/installing/installing-overview#installing, "Installing Development Tools">>.
The creation of a new Vaadin project with each IDE is covered in <<dummy/../../../framework/getting-started/getting-started-first-project#getting-started.overview, "Creating a Vaadin Project">>.