Selection in Eclipse is handled using two distinct implementations. The original Eclipse workbench implementation, along with JFace, uses interfaces such as ISelection and IStructuredSelection to represent a selected object. The Eclipse 3.x Platform UI provided an ISelectionService to keep track of a global selected object in the current window.

Since both JFace and the Eclipse Platform UI depend upon SWT, the traditional selection service was tied to a specific implementation of the graphics library, which limited its use outside of SWT. As a result, the ESelectionService was created to provide closer ties with the E4 platform, without the SWT/JFace dependencies. Both of these selection mechanisms are seen in modern Eclipse applications.