| [eclipse-dev] Towards a simpler(-looking) Java IDE |
Hi.
In the past, I heard variants of the following multiple times and
I'm certain this is the same for many of you:
The Eclipse IDE would be too cluttered, there being too many
buttons everywhere, etc. Often, this is paired with thoughts
about the IDE looking old and VSC/IJ looking "better".
I think I came across discussions about simplifying that in some places from people working on Eclipse in the past (e.g. in the devcall), I didn't see many results in terms of "uncluttering" the IDE.
This is what a plain Eclipse for Java Developers installation looks like for me (I just used 2025-06 since I had that available but it shouldn't make much of a difference):
If we create a new Java perspective with a goal of being "minimal"/"simplistic", I have the following suggestions for things that could be hidden from a new "simplistic" perspective by default:
- Remove some views by default which are probably not used by
most devs (if someone wants these views, they can always get it
back):
- Mylyn tasks view
- Maybe the Javadoc/Declaration View
- Remove some buttons in the toolbar
- possibly the open type/open task/search buttons
- maybe the terminal button as people could get it by
right-clicking elements in the package explorer and selecting Show
In > Terminal
- skip all breakpoints (it's probably enough to have this in
the debugging perspective)
- all the editor presentation buttons (toggle Java Editor
breadcrumb, mark occurences, focus editor on active task, word
wrap, block selection, whitespace characters
- maybe some of the navigation buttons
- remove the coverage button as long as there are no open
projects using JUnit or similar in the workspace (or if there's a
run configuration involving tests) but this might require some
additional work?
- remove the button for running external tools
- remove the button for creating packages since that can be
done when creating classes
- maybe even hide the outline
- maybe get rid of the Javadoc/Declaration views at the bottom
When thinking about these suggestions, please keep in mind that I am suggesting to create a new perspective and not remove the existing Java perspective. People that like the existing Java perspective should still be able to switch back to it.
Such a new perspective could look as follows:
With only a few toolbar buttons, it might even be a good idea to move some elements of the toolbar of the simplistic perspective to the center by default.
I suggest to take the following steps (or similar) if people working on Eclipse want to provide a "simplistic" Java IDE.
- provide additional "minimal Java" perspective (I think that's
pretty uncontroversial and should be pretty easy to do)
- Make sure it is prominently shown (N&N, maybe as one of the
options on the https://eclipseide.org/ front page, etc.) to
hopefully get feedback
- Maybe some magazines that show dev stuff (e.g. Heise
online?) are interested in "The Eclipse IDE is getting a new look"
- Maybe this can become the default Java perspective at some point
(depending on feedback)
- It might be worth considering to do this only on new
installs and not updates but maybe show the new simplistic Java
perspective in the perspective switcher by default?
- Do similar things with the debug perspective (maybe that one
doesn't need things for type creation, etc)
Is there interest to do something like that? What do you all think?
Of course, there are also other roadblocks for starting with development using the Eclipse IDE. For example, it might be a good idea to automatically create a package when creating the first class in a modular project (currently, people just get an error when they create a Java project with a new class using the default settings).
Yours,