How do I get the old colors and look & feel back in Eclipse 4.2?

Question

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...

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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/

Answer 3

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!

Answer 4

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...