Problems viewing CSS files in Aptana Eclipse Plug-in under Vista 64-bit

Last week I upgraded my dev system to a Dell Studio XPS-121M--which comes equipped with Windows Vista 64-bit. For the most part, I had no problems getting my software migrated over to the new box. However, for the first time I went to edit a CSS file this morning in Eclipse and was getting a blank screen.

I'm currently using the Aptana plug-in under Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) and thought something was wrong with my installation (since it was just a copy of the old directory.) After trying a number of things, I came across an open ticket at Aptana that indicates there's a problem with the Mozilla XUL support under Vista 64-bit.

NOTE:

The full Aptana Studio was based on Eclipse v3.2 up until Studio v1.3. If you are running an old version of Aptana Studio, you may run into the same issue under Windows Vista 64-bit editions.

To resolve the problem, two fixes mentioned in the ticket worked for me:

1. Toggle to the "IE Preview" mode and back. Obviously this fix is a real PITA, but at least I knew I was on the right track.
2. Disable the "Firefox Preview" mode (Preferences > Aptana > Editors > CSS > Preview > Uncheck Firefox.) When I first went to this preference, it didn't show either browser. I then unchecked the "Generate temporary files for browser previews", clicked "OK" and then closed all open CSS files. When I went back to the menu, the browsers were listed in the box again.

Since I don't use the Preview mode (although I suppose that might be handy at times) I just disabled the Firefox support. This seems to be working well for the time being.

The good news is this apparently is fixed in Eclipse v3.4 (Ganymede.) However, last week when I was trying to get things up and running I was having problems connecting to the Eclipse update site, so I'm still on v3.3 for the time being. I'll try upgrading again to v3.4 maybe this weekend.

In the meantime, hopefully this helps someone out.