Bug 219273 [PropertiesDialog] [RCP] allow initial property page to be specified
Currently the initial property page selected in the properties dialog is the first property page (for a resource, this is Resources). For an RCP application this is unhelpful if there is a property page used by the RCP application. Unfortunately, there is no way to either specify an initial property page to be selected, or to specify the order of the property pages (or some sort of priority) that would allow the RCP specific page to be first. Probably the preferred solution is a priority mechanism similar to that in commands (or somewhere IIRC) where you associated a priority with each property page. This allows relatively uninteresting properties (like perhaps Resources) to be put towards the bottom. That way this will more naturally work in an IDE environment as well, such that the top property page for a resource is the most interesting. I would be happy to work on a patch for this, if someone would agree before hand the direction we should take.
bundles/org.eclipse.jface/src/org/eclipse/jface/preference/PreferenceDialog.java
*            The identifier for the page
	 * @since 3.0
	 */
	public void setSelectedNode(String pageId) {
		setSelectedNodePreference(pageId);
	}
	/**
	 * Sets the name of the selected item preference.
	 * 
	 * @param pageId
	 *            The identifier for the page
	 */
	protected void setSelectedNodePreference(String pageId) {
		lastPreferenceId = pageId;
	}
	/**
	 * Changes the shell size to the given size, ensuring that it is no larger
	 * than the display bounds.
	 * 
	 * @param width
	 *            the shell width
	 * @param height
	 *            the shell height
	 */
	private void setShellSize(int width, int height) {
		Rectangle preferred = getShell().getBounds();
		preferred.width = width;
		preferred.height = height;
		getShell().setBounds(getConstrainedShellBounds(preferred));
	}