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Eclipse Juno themes [message #844978]

Sat, 14 April 2012 11:45

Eclipse User

Hardcoded white background color[ 9 votes ]
1.	Should only use Eclipse colors	2 / 22%
2.	Should only use System palette colors	4 / 44%
3.	It's OK to mix system palette and Eclipse theme colors	0 / 0%
4.	Should give option to use either Eclipse or System color there but not both	3 / 33%

Some applications wrongfully assume that the default system background color is white and build the UI based on that assumption. I am surprised to discover that the new Eclipse versions (e.g. 4.2M6 I am looking at) make that assumption. The new Eclipse UI looks odd and inconsistent Confused

with non-white system backgrounds. (see screen-shot).

My advice to the developers is to be consistent. If you want to force white background then do that and ignore system colors. However if you want to rely on the system color palette then don't make assumptions about those colors, e.g. that that the system text background is always white. You either use your own theme with all colors you want or entirely rely on the system theme/palette.

Also the new UI seem to unnecessarily waste more real estate with increased spacing between panels. I sound like a grumpy old man complaining about everything Very Happy

So my question is this. Shouldn't the assumption of a white background color be classified as a bug? What do you think?

Attachment: eclipse-4.2M6.png
(Size: 95.15KB, Downloaded 2966 times)

[Updated on: Sat, 14 April 2012 18:19] by Moderator

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #845136 is a reply to message #844978]

Sat, 14 April 2012 15:43

Eclipse User

On 2012.04.14 9:45, Yurx Cherio wrote:
> Some application wrongfully assume that the default system background color is white and build the UI based on that assumption. I am surprised to discover that the new Eclipse versions (e.g. 4.2M6 I am looking at) make that assumption. The new Eclipse UI looks odd and inconsistent :? with non-white system backgrounds. (see screenshot).
>
> My advice to the developers is to be consistent. If you want to force white background then do that and ignore system colors. However if you want to rely on the system color palette then don't make assumptions about those colors, e.g. that that the system text background is always white. You either use your own theme with all colors you want or entirely rely on the system theme/palette.
>

I agree: so much so that even earlier versions of Eclipse work badly on
Ubuntu being annoying when not positively unreadable for some situations
(like Javadoc pop-ups, errors, etc.). This has long forced me to adopt
the Clearlooks theme, a white background theme. I have never been able
to adjust the colors via Preferences to any working or acceptable point.
While this doesn't annoy me too much (being forced to adopt this theme
for my entire Ubuntu experience), it's seem a bit ridiculous to force it
on me.

My Windows experience with Eclipse never created this problem for me.
I'm guessing that most Eclipse developers are Windows-oriented.

I'm a white/wheat/light background sort of guy. I'm speaking from
Lucid/Maverick and earlier versions of Ubuntu, also SuSE 10.x. I don't
know what that ghastly Unity desktop brings to the equation.

(Hope my comments aren't too random.)

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #845235 is a reply to message #845136]

Sat, 14 April 2012 18:18

Eclipse User

Thanks Russell, I forgot to mention that my development environment is Ubuntu. Eclipse versions 3.x also had minor color inconsistencies but those could be fixed via Preferences. I couldn't find a way to adjust the colors in Eclipse 4.x so that they don't conflict with my system background.

What it means to me that instead of migrating to 4.2 I'll be moving on to 3.8. 3.8 also doesn't waste too much space between editors and toolbars. Increased spaces between eclipse views/tabs/editors makes the new version almost unusable on the not-so-large-resolution laptop screens. It may look prettier but I don't run Eclipse to simply look at how pretty it is Razz

[Updated on: Sat, 14 April 2012 18:23] by Moderator

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #847418 is a reply to message #844978]

Tue, 17 April 2012 05:24

Eclipse User

just wondering, did you file a bug? because this clearly is one (having white text on a white/light-gray background in default config is not acceptable by me)

if you do file a bug, can you post a link here?

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #847845 is a reply to message #847418]

Tue, 17 April 2012 14:04

Eclipse User

I haven't file a bug. I always question myself what if it is only my personal opinion and hence may be subjective. Thanks to your feedback it looks like this an obvious issue and a bug.

Even though I've been using Eclipse for a long time I have never filed bugs against it. I'll try to file one tonight.

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #872214 is a reply to message #844978]

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:21

Eclipse User

Ran across this in a search, so I figured I'd mention that there is a way to workaround this problem without changing your system theme. You can specify a theme to load when you load an application, like so:

GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/gtkrc eclipse

Replace the path to the gtkrc file with whichever theme you think works best in Eclipse. You can also specify multiple gtkrc files, in case you're using spacing hacks from Indigo or earlier:

GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:~/.eclipseGtkRc eclipse

Though I imagine with the new CSS theming those gtkrc hacks will go away eventually.

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #892541 is a reply to message #844978]

Thu, 28 June 2012 10:54

Eclipse User

Yurx Cherio wrote on Sat, 14 April 2012 11:45

[..] The new Eclipse UI looks odd and inconsistent with non-white system backgrounds. (see screen-shot). [..]

Seriously, how did you manage to get your Eclipse looking so 'smooth'? I've just installed Eclipse Juno (4.2 final) on my Ubuntu machine - and it looks quite awful, as you can see in the attached screenshot... *sigh*

(Note that grey-ish main toolbar - this is actually composed of a background image)

Best wishes,
Karsten

Attachment: Eclipse.png
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Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #893200 is a reply to message #892541]

Tue, 03 July 2012 03:45

Eclipse User

Edit following files to get desired results :

plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css/e4_basestyle.css
plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css/e4_default.css
plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css/e4_default_gtk.css

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #893203 is a reply to message #893200]

Tue, 03 July 2012 03:58

Eclipse User

Archan Paul wrote on Tue, 03 July 2012 03:45

Edit following files to get desired results : [..]

Yes, I've done that already - the result is definitely a lot better, though still some weird issues remain (collapsed view area, see screenshot).

Best wishes,
Karsten

Attachment: Collapsed view.png
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Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #893727 is a reply to message #893203]

Thu, 05 July 2012 07:12

Eclipse User

I got better result with following changes (I use ArchLinux).

[arp@arpc org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400]$ diff -Nuarp css.orig/ css
diff -Nuarp css.orig/e4_basestyle.css css/e4_basestyle.css
--- css.orig/e4_basestyle.css   2012-06-08 23:54:26.000000000 +0530
+++ css/e4_basestyle.css        2012-07-05 16:35:52.982893152 +0530
@@ -28,7 +28,5 @@
 }
 
 .MToolControl.TrimStack {
-       frame-image:  url(./winXPTSFrame.png);
-       handle-image:  url(./winXPHandle.png);
        frame-cuts: 5px 1px 5px 16px;
 }
diff -Nuarp css.orig/e4_default.css css/e4_default.css
--- css.orig/e4_default.css     2012-06-08 23:54:26.000000000 +0530
+++ css/e4_default.css  2012-07-05 16:36:08.852894190 +0530
@@ -31,7 +31,6 @@
 
 
 .MTrimBar#org-eclipse-ui-main-toolbar  {
-    background-image:  url(./winXPBlue.png);
 }
 
 .MPartStack.active {
diff -Nuarp css.orig/e4_default_gtk.css css/e4_default_gtk.css
--- css.orig/e4_default_gtk.css 2012-06-08 23:54:26.000000000 +0530
+++ css/e4_default_gtk.css      2012-07-05 16:36:26.069561984 +0530
@@ -16,12 +16,9 @@
 }
 
 .MTrimBar#org-eclipse-ui-main-toolbar  {
-    background-image:  url(./gtkGrey.png);
 }
 
 .MToolControl.TrimStack {
-       frame-image:  url(./gtkTSFrame.png);
-       handle-image:  url(./gtkHandle.png);
 }
 
 .MPartStack.active {

Attachment: eclipse_juno_screenshot-05072012_1.png
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Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #893909 is a reply to message #844978]

Thu, 05 July 2012 20:27

Eclipse User

This is seriously crap. According to the wiki and a few other places, these CSS themes are now some sort of core part of eclipse. They don't load properly and they override only like 20% of my original workspace settings (Intentionally, according to the wiki!)

Now my eclipse is half black on black and half white on white. It can't even figure out the right way to load colors.

I tried switching themes around, to see if any would load my system colors, and not only do none of them load my system colors but they also improperly unload/reload each other. So the XP olive theme will have an orange bar at the top, and if I go to another theme that DOESN'T have a bar it will now be a combo of the two themes put together.

There is no documentation on what is what either in the existing themes, so I just have to play with it and completely restart eclipse every time. I tried out a live CSS theme editor specifically made by the team for eclipse and it appears to do nothing. I have to restart anyway.

About 2 weeks ago I was just complaining about IDEA to my friends, and why one of the reasons I preferred eclipse over IDEA or netbeans was that they actually used common sense and loaded ALL of the colors from your system colors instead of only half. Well now all three IDEs just do what they want so I guess I either need to learn to fiddle with it for hours, or give up and go back to a normal white theme.

Argh. If this isn't the place for this rant let me know. I'm just incredibly frustrated right now.

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #894140 is a reply to message #893909]

Fri, 06 July 2012 17:54

Eclipse User

I totally agree with everything that Dalton said. I really struggle to read some colour combinations, particularly ones that are very bright and stark as my eyes are quite sensitive to bright light. I considerer it an important accessibility feature for applications to carefully follow the system colour pallet.

Fortunately it seems this this problem is trivial to fix: simply delete all the .css files in `${eclipse.home}plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css' and restart Eclipse. 　ばんざい! System colours restored. ^^

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #900653 is a reply to message #894140]

Tue, 07 August 2012 21:12

Eclipse User

alex hutter wrote on Fri, 06 July 2012 17:54

I totally agree with everything that Dalton said. I really struggle to read some colour combinations, particularly ones that are very bright and stark as my eyes are quite sensitive to bright light. I considerer it an important accessibility feature for applications to carefully follow the system colour pallet.

Fortunately it seems this this problem is trivial to fix: simply delete all the .css files in `${eclipse.home}plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css' and restart Eclipse. 　ばんざい! System colours restored. ^^

I had the same problem, spent too much time trying to make it look accessible.
Deleting css dir worked like a charm.
Thanks.

Re: Eclipse Juno themes [message #1020557 is a reply to message #844978]

Mon, 18 March 2013 09:06

Eclipse User

I totally agree with all of you and this is definitely a bug.Currently eclipse is using system colors and eclipse theme colors meanwhile which causes a theme confliction(e.g. windows 7 default aero theme with dark eclipse juno theme).After installing dark theme(github.com/eclipse-color-theme/eclipse-ui-themes)for eclipse 4.2 sr2,there are still some weird issues:
- Console colors don't fit
- Scrollbar colors don't fit
- Table head row colors under "Problems" doesn't fit.
Screenshot as follows:
index.php/fa/13902/0/

Nowadays, vs 2011(wpf based),netbeans 7.3.1(swing based) and intellij idea 12(swing based) have a full-featured high-quality and consistent dark theme except eclipse(swt based).
Attach iintellij idea's darcula theme for comparison.
index.php/fa/13904/0/

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[Updated on: Mon, 18 March 2013 09:12] by Moderator

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