I had been using Eclipse 3.x for a few years and while I had a few issues w.r.t. its stability and performance, I never had any particular annoyance with the UI itself...
Now that the new and shiny Eclipse 4.2 is out of the oven, it feels more stable and somewhat snappier, but I instantly felt a dislike for some details of its UI:
I find the "curved" look of the main toolbar distracting and it seems to me that it does not mix well with any other element in my desktop. It could just be a color issue, but the toolbar is prevalent enough to merit a specific mention.
The default colors do not work well with the TFT/TN displays of the laptop and both desktop computers that I am using. The various gradients seem completely washed out, the tab separators are practically invisible and the toolbar curve looks totally weird.
It's also almost impossible to tell which view is active - Eclipse 3.x used a unique blue color for the active tab header. Juno uses a color-reversal in all inactive tabs, which probably sounds more visible, but in my opinion that effect is lost because the active tab is still in a shade of gray which is lost in the overall gray-ness of the new UI...
So, how do I get back to a more reasonable look and feel? Is there somewhere a theming option that would help?
PS.1: I use Eclipse/GTK on Linux...
PS.2: What happened to all the colors in Juno, anyway?
PS.3: Can we keep the new splash screen, though? That one, I like...
Apparently, the Eclipse developers were kind enough to leave us an easy way out:
From the Window menu, select Preferences.
Expand the General category in the Preferences dialog tree.
Click on the Appearance sub-category.
On the left side of the window, a Theme drop-down menu will appear - click on it.
Select Classic in the Theme drop-down menu.
Most important: you need to restart Eclipse after that, even though no hint to that effect appears.
This setting is mentioned in several blog posts, which for some reason I could not find until I started using terms such as "awful" and "ugly" in Google. It seems that I was not the only one to find the new theme unbearable...
There is another way documented here.
This goes a lot further than the switch to classic theme and makes it look like 3.x.
The problem with the Juno L & F is that its great on monitors with 1600x1050. But my work PC has 2 screens that are 1280x1-24. Not so great!
I found a way to make Juno look like Indigo: I know there are new fancy themes around but I'm not willing to spend time on it.
My solution is just to copy the Indigo css_prefs files into Juno directory
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings
The file you have to look for are
org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme.prefs and org.eclipse.wst.css.ui.prefs
If you don't have them you can download from my blog http://www.venturin.net/2013/04/04/eclipse-juno-looks-ugly-in-linux-mint-14-nadia/
To restore traditional style tabs on more recent versions of Eclipse, edit e4_classic_winxp.css and change swt-simple: false; to swt-simple: true; (this assumes you are using the default Classic theme).
On Eclipse Kepler this file is located in:
eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.platform_4.3.2.v20140221-1700\css
On Eclipse Mars this file is located in:
eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.ui.themes_1.1.0.v20150511-0913\css
Related
For some reason, Netbeans IDE 8.2 won't apply any different themes than the original one. Has anyone else had an issue with this? I have applied the new theme and restarted the application many times without success. Thank you.
It's very hard to identify what is wrong since everything in your screenshot looks perfect, and Sublime-Theme works for me using NetBeans 8.2 on Windows 10. See the file with the tab NewServlet.java in the screen shot below.
Note that using Sublime-Theme does not impact everything. For example, the Projects and Navigator panels don't change. Since your screen shot only showed the Options window, and the Start Page doesn't change in the editor either, are you absolutely certain that none of your files in the editor are using Sublime-Theme?
Also, you say that "Netbeans IDE 8.2 won't apply any different themes than the original one", but NetBeans comes bundled with several themes, such as NetBeans and NetBeans 5.5 as shown in the screen shot below. How many options are shown in the profile drop list for you? If you select a different theme from the Profile list and click Apply the rendering of your files in the editor should change immediately. Is that happening?
If so, the problem is probably confined to the installation of Sublime-Theme. Try deleting Sublime-Theme (the button is in the top right corner of your screen shot), and then import the zip file again to see if that fixes the problem. Also, verify that the Sublime-Theme zip file you downloaded can be manually unzipped since it might be a corrupt file.
Another thing to try is using some alternative plugins. Select Tools -> Plugins -> Available Plugins and then install Dark Look and Feel Themes and Darcula LAF for NetBeans. If those don't work either then there is something fundamentally wrong with the installation of NetBeans.
Finally, this article titled The complete guide to tuning the appearance of NetBeans may be helpful.
I recently installed new C/C++ software plugins for Eclipse. After restart, the perspective changed. I didn't like the new colors and stuff, so I got rid of it via Preferences->General->Appereance->Restore Defaults.
There's only one thing left thats bugging me, it's really a minor issue but nevertheless I'd like to have it fixed. The project explorer went kinda smooth and round, before the changes it was edgy. Same with the tabs. Searched the web, couldn't find an answer. Anyone?
Here's a picture
Toggle this setting within General Preferences:
Is there a way in eclipse to assign certain files a colour (much like OSX's Finder):
Such that opened editor's tabs are assigned the same colour - (and maybe even the text editor's background
For instance if I am working with MVC, I could assign all the Models blue, all the Views Green, Mediators Yellow etc...
I can't find one, but it seems so natural/obvious to me I thought I'd better ask.
Else, does anyone else have problems visually grouping th
Kind of...
Please have a look at Andrei Loskutov's Extended VS presentation plugin which, as its name suggests, is a Visual Studio skin for Eclipse. It has some tab colouring features (although may be the one you describe).
On a general note Andrei's eclipse plugins have, since version 2.x, garnered a lot of well deserved praise...
EDIT: For anyone coming to this question through searching, you can install a Gnome Theme called Clearlooks Compact to shorten your tabs in Eclipse. This will free up a lot of screen space. You can also check out the answer below to learn how to make the tabs more horizontally compact.
Short version: How do I make a short version of Eclipse's tabs & toolbars in Ubuntu?
I've been looking around for a fix to this on Google, but to no avail. With any GTK theme, I still have this same issue and it's very, very annoying--to the point where I've stopped using Eclipse in favor of gEdit. However, after running pylint from a terminal too. many. times. I've decided I need to find a solution to this issues with Eclipse so I can have PyDev back. Here's what the tabs look like:
alt text http://c0496682.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/big-tabs.png
As you can see, not only are the tabs exaggerated, but the toolbar is, too: so is the toolbar on the bottom; so are the tabs in the bottom pane. Overall, it's eating up a lot of screen space, which is a hard item to come by on a 17" screen. Any suggestions/fixes?
This can be solved changing your GTK settings;
gedit ~/.gtkrc-2.0
Then add this;
style "gtkcompact" {
GtkButton::default_border={0,0,0,0}
GtkButton::default_outside_border={0,0,0,0}
GtkButtonBox::child_min_width=0
GtkButtonBox::child_min_heigth=0
GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_x=0
GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_y=0
GtkMenu::vertical-padding=1
GtkMenuBar::internal_padding=0
GtkMenuItem::horizontal_padding=4
GtkToolbar::internal-padding=0
GtkToolbar::space-size=0
GtkOptionMenu::indicator_size=0
GtkOptionMenu::indicator_spacing=0
GtkPaned::handle_size=4
GtkRange::trough_border=0
GtkRange::stepper_spacing=0
GtkScale::value_spacing=0
GtkScrolledWindow::scrollbar_spacing=0
GtkTreeView::vertical-separator=0
GtkTreeView::horizontal-separator=0
GtkTreeView::fixed-height-mode=TRUE
GtkWidget::focus_padding=0
}
class "GtkWidget" style "gtkcompact"
borrowed from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1465712
In addition to #Varun Mehta answer, I recommend the following tips for Eclipse 4 (Juno), whose interface is partially dictated and configurable by CSS rules:
In YourEclipseDir/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.x.y.v2012zzzzzzzz/css, edit:
e4_basestyle.css
e4_default.css
e4_default_gtk.css
... and adjust those files. I use the following set of tweaks:
set all the margin-* and padding to 0
set swt-shadow-visible: false everywhere you find it, to get rid of those huge shadows
set .MPartStack {font-size} to something smaller than 12
Finally, remember you can disable the toolbar. In 4.0, its state wasn't remembered across sessions, but it seems like the issue is solved in 4.2.1
Bonus resources: Eclipse4/CSS will get you started on Eclipse4 CSS, E4/CSS/SWT Mapping lists other interesting CSS attributes, and CSS Spy will help you inspect the UI.
Screenshot of what I end up with:
EDIT: see also How to remove the close (×) button from Eclipse Juno tabs?
In Addition to Ronans answer, it is possible to change the height of the tabs directly in Eclipse Juno.
edit the css file of your current style (e.g. e4_default_gtk.css) and add
CTabFolder {
tab-height: 16px;
}
Note: CTabFolder ... not add this to CTabFolder Canvas!
I too have suffered from this quite a bit, before I found the solution by changing the general appearance of my IDE.
You can try and customize the look-and-feel or you Eclipse Environment from,
Go to : Window -> Preferences -> General -> Appearance.
try setting,
Current Presentation to " Default ".
Enable " Traditional Style Tabs " (for rectangular tabs.)
Disable Animation ( if you don't like swoosh effect.)
Note: the Default Eclipse 4 just got a bit better with bug 420238 closed:
[CSS] Reduce whitespace usage in the default Eclipse themes
Before:
After:
See Lars Vogel's article about it:
If you fire up the next Eclipse 4.4 milestone build, Eclipse uses much less whitespace and leaves more space for the important content.
(That would be 4.4 M5)
While this is on a technical level a trivial change, I hope that this will improve the initial perception people have in using Eclipse.
A big thanks to Daniel Rolka, Robin Stocker and Dani Megert for doing the majority of the work and a big thanks all involved parties in the Bug report to get this change accepted.
If you really want to make the tabs nice an' short, take a gander at Clearlooks Compact.
I preferred to just hit the whole IDE with a splash of "meh," so here's what I ended up with.
This is probably a simple issue for some subclipse guru. My decorator colors don't work in eclipse. I'm guessing that some plugin I have is interfering with it somehow. I'm on the current public release of ganymede. Going to the fonts and colors option area lets me change the decorator text color, but I get no effect in the project explorer. Any ideas?
Are you using KDE on Linux? There is a known bug if you use the gtk-qt-engine to make GTK programs (like Eclipse) look more like KDE apps. If this gtk theming engine is active the text colors in views don't work. This is a common problem for mylyn users.
This is probably not important any more, but the decorator issue came down to using the correct view. The "project" view and the "file" view look extremely similar, but the decorators work correctly in one and not the other.