Eclipse4/SDK Visual Design

This page summarizes ongoing visual design work done for the Eclipse 4.x SDK. For information about the original design process for the default look and feel of the Eclipse 4.0 Early Adopter Release, please see E4/CSS/Visual Design.

The ability to style the Eclipse Workbench using CSS reduces the need for the default theme to be all things to all people. However, we do need to continue to advance the default theme and also to respond to community feedback.

For the Eclipse 4.1 SDK, the work can be categorized as follows:

• Continue to evolve the implementation of the default theme to catch up with the ideas in the mockups and to respond to community feedback/fix problems in the design itself.
• Improve the "classic" theme to reach near "pixel perfection" relative to Eclipse 3.x.
• Ensure we offer a theme designed for accessibility.

There also needs to be work done to make it clear what can be styled in the workbench, and how, but that is not in the scope of this particular document. We expect other designers/developers to build themes, and this should help drive the flexibility and standardization of the CSS.

Default Theme

• catch the implementation up with the mockups (bug 293481 and its dependents)
• new design work (deferred items from 4.0, or drilling down into more detail)
  • editor area visual indication bug 322432
  • perspective area in different positions bug 314163
  • drag and drop visual emphasis (modernize the source and target visuals, new cursor icons, difference between stack manipulation and editor split visuals)
• ability to have the view toolbar always stay underneath the tab bug 292792
• consider an editor toolbar
• specify an image as the workbench background

Classic Theme

• eliminate extra lines and clean up perspective switcher visuals bug 322417,bug 314163

Accessible Theme

• a theme that works well in high contrast mode