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Just loaded and started up M8 on Mac OS X, and the new UI is HORRIBLE There are several different graduated fills across the UI (the tabs have a graduated UI in one direction, whilst the tab bar has a graduated fill in a different direction). Add this to the fact that each view seems to have its own border, around which a separate border is drawn, and the user interface doesn't feel so much designed as thrown together by a blind watchmaker. I really like Eclipse, and have used it for a long time, but the new look UI is really, really, really bad. (Hence marking this as major). Something really has to be done to improve the UI look on Mac if you want Eclipse 3.0 to be seen as a native Mac application.
FWIW Mac OS X.3.3 with 3.0 M8
One of the main criticisms of the new look that I have is the graduated title bars really do NOT work on a Mac platform. Whilst a graduated title bar may look good (or even normal) on a Win XP system, it's not the case that other UI platforms subscribe to the just-because-it-can-doesn't-mean-we-should UI model. Secondly, the graduated title bars only really work with long titles -- such as across a screen where the graudated fade is barely noticeable. When the title is of a view, and the view is only 100 pixels wide (or less), and when that title bar is propagaed with tabs, then the effect becomes nauseous. Add this to the fact that the tabs are *also* graduated, but in a perpendicular orientation, and it really doesn't work -- and I'd argue, it would be just as ugly on a Windows system. I'm not saying that we should get the 'brushed metal' look and feel on a Mac platform (not even sure that it would be nice :-) but I think solid colour tabs/title bars are likely to be desirable.
Created attachment 8971 [details] Eliminated Gradients Have you tried to configure the tab gradients so that they are no longer gradients but solid colours? You can do this yourself via Preferences > Workbench > Colors nad Fonts > Workbench Appearance. We'll have to find good default settings.
Eliminating the gradients makes it much better in a single swoop. I'm still not sure that the selected tab should be bright blue, but in one single switch you've almost convinced me to close the bug :-) I'd suggest that a darker gray should be used to represent inactive tabs, and a lighter grey be used to indicate the selected tabs. That would be more like (say) Safari's tab support. Note that Safari's unselected tabs take on the background colour of the tab bar -- don't know if you want to play around with that?
Hey, I don't have a monopol on fuzzing with the colors. You can do that too :-) The color dialog allows you to pick colors from anywhere of your screen (click on the magnifying glass) and fill a private palette with it (at the bottom of the dialog).
Would also be nice if the close icon was more Mac like; and though I don't think the 'red aqua' blob would work, I think safari's (x) type icon would work quite nicely. IMHO the close icon -- and in general, any icon that looks black-and-white-until-you-mouse-over looks particularly tacky in the new look.
Re comment #3, I think the reason I didn't notice this before is that most (mac) apps have the ability to set the gradient on the colour; whereas in Eclipse's case, it defines the 'start' and 'end' colours separately. I'd personally have preferred to see that there weren't a list of '...begin' and '...end' colours, but rather only display one colour, and where neccessary, show two colour wells when selecting 'Active tab'. Will submit as a new enhancement.
Have filed bug 56561 re suggestions for improving non-graudated colour settings.
Using the title bar colours from Text Edit and a couple of other carbon apps works quite well: o Inactive part background begin/end (F0,F0,F0) -- 94% gray o Active part background begin (E6,E6,E6) -- 90% gray o Active part background end (CC,CC,CC) -- 80% gray That almost looks really nice. Might have to drop the priority of this bug with those as defaults :-)
Created attachment 8973 [details] Eclipse preferences with much nicer tab defaults Have a look at this and see if you like the look of this colour scheme
I've collected all bug reports that block Eclipse M8 from looking good on Mac OS X: bug #55750: Workbench colors need OS specific tweaks, e.g. unselected tabs cannot be read on Solaris bug #56558: Provide UI to set fonts for trees and tables bug #28842: Need a way to turn on/off the focus ring bug #52498: [Workbench] NewLook: suggest to make tab borders slightly lighter bug #56063: [Colors] Perspective toolbar items have wrong background bug #54437: [Font/Colour] View title background doesn't use striped pattern bug #52433: [EditorMgmt] Empty editor area uses wrong background color
Re comment #18, added bug 53721 as a dependency as well
this has changed a lot since M8, closing
