Lightning Components in the Force.com IDE | Force.com IDE Developer Guide

What is the Lightning Component Framework?
The Lightning Component framework is a UI framework for developing dynamic web apps for mobile and desktop devices. It’s a modern framework for building single-page applications engineered for growth.

Notable Lightning Components Features in the Force.com IDE
The Force.com IDE includes lots of cool features to make working with Lightning components easier. Here are a few of our favorites.

Set Up the Force.com IDE with Lightning Components Support
Support for the Lightning Component Framework is generally available in Summer ’16 (Force.com IDE v37.0) and later versions of the Force.com IDE. Be sure to select Force.com Lightning Support when you install or update the Force.com IDE plug-in.

Explore Lightning Components in the Force.com IDE
Learn how to create a simple Lightning component that renders a list of contacts from your org. Start by creating an Apex controller class, and then create a Lightning component and an event handler. Finally, render the list of contacts in the component.