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
I'm trying to find a legend that can help explain the different colors NetBeans uses to describe the state of a file.
Some of my file colors are:
Grey
Blue
Green
Any others I have yet to discover
If it helps, I'm using Netbeans 6.7 with CVS. What are these colors?
Green means new.
Blue means modified.
Grey means ignored and/or deleted. (Documentation contradicts the tooltip hint!)
If you go into the View menu, you can turn on Show Versioning Labels. That will put text next to each file explaining its state (and what each color represents).
Image from Netbeans.org
Using the online help and searching for icon/icons and or badge/badges should give you the information you want.
Alternatively take a look at BadgedIcons which at least explains some of the colors and icons (e.g. for version control)
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.
I'm thinking of making an easy global dark background switch for Eclipse.
For example intercept all the colors that are about to be rendered and replace them: (R,G,B) -> (255-R, 255-G, 255-B).
Can you suggest Eclipse source spots where it can be done?
The current problems are
Every language-color pair must be manually modified
There are vertical bars that are always white
The related questions:
Is there a simple, consistent way to change the color scheme of eclipse editors?
Dark colorscheme for eclipse?
There is none. I once explored making a dark color scheme for an Eclipse-based IDE we were creating for our customers. The vertical bars do stay white, and some other colors could not be changed too.
Now, I must say there is always an obscure way to do something. If you really want that, and have required Java programming skills, you could write an Equinox adaptor hook that would run byte-code instrumentation on SWT to intercept all color-related calls and proxy them through your color mapper. (Ask on SO if you need help with that.)
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Closed 10 years ago.
Is Eclipse at all theme-able? I would like to install a dark color scheme for it, since I much prefer white text on dark background than the other way around.
As posted to a few related questions already, I'm working on a plugin for easy, cross-editor color theme management:
http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-color-theme
It is still work in progress, but already supports many editors and a few dark color themes.
I've created my own dark color scheme (based on Oblivion from gedit), which I think is very nice to work with.
Preview & details at: http://www.rogerdudler.com/?p=362
We're happy to announce the beta of eclipsecolorthemes.org, a new website to download, create and maintain Eclipse color themes / schemes. The theme editor allows you to copy an existing theme and edit the colors with a live preview of your changes on specific editors. The downloadable themes support a lot of editors (PHP, Java, SQL, Ant, text, HTML, CSS, and more to follow)
There's a growing list of themes already available on the site:
Zenburn
Oblivion
Inkpot
Vibrant Ink
You can read more about the launch here.
Here's a guy that posted his Eclipse preferences for changing the colors like a theme:
http://blog.codefront.net/2006/09/28/vibrant-ink-textmate-theme-for-eclipse/
And here's more about how to set the colors in the Ganymede Eclipse version (v. 3.4, mid 2008):
http://help.eclipse.org/ganymede/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/accessibility/fontsandcolors.htm
For Linux users, assuming you run a compositing window manager (Compiz), you can just turn the window negative. I use Eclipse like this all the time, the normal (whitie) looks is blowing my eyes off.
These are the pleasing colors for my eyes during coding. Jazz music not included in theme.
Eclipse Color Themes Plugin file: LukinaJama3.xml on depositfiles
This is the best place for Eclipse color themes:
http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/
I have to say, this is one area where Eclipse is really weak. Specifically, the import/export of preferences applies to ALL preferences. There is no way to import say just the fonts/color preferences (like you can with Visual Studio) without mucking up my key binding preferences.
Also, I have tried several of these preference files referenced above, and they completely break my Eclipse install.
I've created several color themes, and a script to extract a new one from someone's color preferences. I'm currently using one I still have yet to post on the site, but I should eventually get to it.
http://eclipsecolorthemes.jottit.com
Easiest way: change the Windows Display Properties main window background color. I went to Appearance tab, changed to Silver scheme, clicked Advanced, clicked on "Active Window" and changed Color 1 to a light gray. All Eclipse views softened.
Since Luna (4.4) there seems to be a full Dark them in
Window -> Preferences -> General -> Appearance -> Theme -> Dark
For the quick hack, on Linux running GNOME with a Windows keyboard, Windows-Key-M will inverse-color all windows, and Windows-Key-N will inverse color a single window. It's an awesome feature, in my book.
As I replied to "Is there a simple, consistent way to change the color scheme of Eclipse editors?":
I've been looking for this too and
after a bit of research found a
workable solution. This is based on
the FDT editor for Eclipse, but I'm
sure you could apply the same logic to
other editors.
My blog post: Howto create a
color-scheme for FDT
Hope this helps!
The best solution I've found is to leave Eclipse in normal bright mode, and use an OS level screen inverter.
On OS X you can do Command + Option + Ctrl + 8, inverts the whole screen.
On Linux with Compiz, it's even better, you can do Windows + N to darken windows selectively (or Windows + M to do the whole screen).
On Windows, the only decent solution I've found is powerstrip, but it's only free for one year... then it's like $30 or something...
Then you can invert the screen, adjust the syntax-level colours to your liking, and you're off to the races, with cool shades on.
If you use Aptana then you can download a dark color theme! I have been looking for one recently and found the Aptana one. Thought others might be interested!
Check out: http://www.nightlion.net/themes/2009/aptana-dark-color-theme/
Checkout this color scheme I created for Eclipse PDT. It is based on the Vim Zenburn color scheme developed by slinky
Here's a rev 0.0.1 of an attempt at a dark background colour scheme for Eclipse (and a screenshot). Any feedback at all? (this is a big departure from what I normally use for Vim.
Some people posted options for Linux and Mac, and the Windows (free) equivalent is, if you can deal with it globally:
Set Windows desktop appearance theme window background color. You can keep current/desired theme, just modify the background color of windows. By default, it is set to white. I change it to a shade of grey. I tried dark grey and black before, but then you have to change text font colors globally, and all that's painful.
But a simple shade of grey as background does the trick globally, works with any color text font as long as the shade of grey is not too dark.
It's not the best solution for all editors/IDEs, as I prefer black, but it's the next best free & global workaround on Windows.
I have finally found exactly what I have been looking for, i.e. a dark theme for PyDev (although I still feel like Eclipse is missing out on this).
This is another dark Eclipse theme: http://blog.prabir.me/post/Dark-Eclipse-Theme.aspx.
I have the Visual Studio equivalent of the theme.
I played with customizing the colors. I went with the yellow text/blue background I've liked from Turbo Pascal. The problem I ran into was it let you set the colors of the editors but then the other views like Package Explorer or Navigator stayed with the default black-on-white colors. I'm sure you could do it programatically but there are waaaay to many settings for my patience.
In response to this comment I made a filter for Color Filter plugin for Compiz.
Here's what I got:
Howto:
Go to /usr/share/compiz/filters/
Create new file "negative-low-contrast" (as
root)
Insert the attached code into it.
Go to
System->Preferences->CompizConfig
...
Enter Color Filter Plugin
Enable
it and add newly created filter to
the list Profeet!!
Filter code:
!!ARBfp1.0
TEMP temp, neg;
# Dunno what's this... but every other filter starts with this :) ;
TEX temp, fragment.texcoord[0], texture[0], RECT;
# Applying negative filter ;
RCP neg.a, temp.a;
MAD temp.rgb, -neg.a, temp, 1.0;
MUL temp.rgb, temp.a, temp;
MUL temp, fragment.color, temp;
# Lowering contrast and shifting brightness ;
MUL temp.rgb, temp, 0.8;
ADD temp.rgb, temp, 0.25;
MOV result.color, temp;
END
You also can play with the filter. May be you will get something more facinating :) Feel free to share!