Bug 58059

Description David J. Orme 2004-04-09 17:54:11 EDT

In response to https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=52780#c73

On Windows 2000, MacOS, and many Linux themes, the new view tabs and view focus
highlight (the box that changes color around the focused view) simply do not
look native.  Specifically:

- View title bar colors (background and/or font) don't match the platform.

- View title bar gradient doesn't match the platform's way of drawing gradients
on windows/subwindows, if a gradient is even used on the platform.

- Views behave more like dockable subwindows, but they're drawn like tabs in a
tabbed notebook.  As one other person observed, views and editors behave
differently, but now they look very similar, leading to confusion.

- The focused view has a border all the way around it that is the same color as
the view's title bar.  I know of no major platform that does this.  Instead, the
usual way to draw a highlight around an active element is to use black/dark gray
or to use some sort of 3d highlighting effect.


My bet is that most folks' gripes about the new look really mostly boil down to
two things: the new wavy lines (still visible with the default preference
settings on the perspective switcher) and the new look for views.  Everything
else seems to relate to usability issues that the Platform/UI team has agreed
all along need to be worked.

If you revert just those two things--the view title bars and the way of drawing
borders around views--back to the pre-new-l&f look, I bet you'll get a lot less
push-back about the new UI.  I like a lot of things about the new look and feel.
 But it still has to look native, and I feel that these specific elements are
the worst offenders in making the new UI look non-native.