Develop with the Force.com IDE

The first step is to create a Force.com project associated with your Salesforce org (the home org) and download metadata components. You can manage projects and files using the standard views, tools, and commands in the Eclipse IDE workbench, and use features from the Force.com IDE.

• Use a wizard to create your first project. For details, see Create a Force.com Project.
• Create or edit the package.xml project manifest file using the Choose Metadata Components dialog. For more information, see About Package.xml and Project Properties.
• Develop in your project and on the server at the same time, with multiple developers accessing the same information. For information on how to refresh data and synchronize changes, see Server Synchronization.

After you have created a project, you can use the Force.com IDE to create, edit and manipulate objects and components.

• Use Force.com wizards to create objects and components, including Apex classes and triggers, and Visualforce components and pages. Each wizard allows you to define properties for the object and creates it with standard attributes and values.
• Edit your code in the feature-rich Force.com IDE Editors, which include content assistance for built-in Apex types.
• Execute anonymous blocks of Apex and commit them to the database using the Execute Anonymous View.
• Browse schema objects and fields or assemble and execute SOQL queries in the Schema Explorer.