The 'Eclipse Plug-ins' book assumes that you are fairly proficient in
Java, but no prior knowledge of Eclipse is necessary. Chapter 1 starts out introducing Eclipse from a user's stand point. Chapters 2 and 3 walk you through the process of building your first plug-in. Chapters 6, 7, 8 and beyond each introduce a new aspect of Eclipse API and incrementally enhance the "favorites" plug-in example started in Chapter 2. This is a very "hands on" book with lots of example code and a samples manager (
http://www.qualityeclipse.com/) for loading each Chapter's sample code into your workspace for you to review and run.