Minimal theme for Eclipse

Question

I've just been setting up a new 10" netbook and have just installed Eclipse for some development. Even on large screens I've found Eclipse's GUI to be very bulky and awkward to work with, and now on a small screen, the real estate left for actual coding is ludicrously small. Is it possible to apply a theme or skin to Eclipse to make it somewhat more minimal? Do you know any good themes for small screens?

Solution 1

If I maximize the editor (Ctrl-M) and use the Eclipse Full Screen Plugin I find Eclipse pretty usable on my 10" netbook.

Solution 2

If I may, please let me make a plug to my blog entry on running Eclipse on the Eee PC 901, which has a 8.9 inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600.

I have some tips toward the end of the entry on ways to maximize the screen real estate in order to be able to show as much source code as possible on the screen.

The main points are:

• Vertical screen real estate is limited, so try to find ways to reduce the vertical spread of windows.
• Use the OS theme which reduces the amount of vertical space used. For example, use the Windows Classic theme in Windows XP in order to save 8 pixels over the default theme.
• Reduce the numbers of rows in the Eclipse toolbar.
• Use the auto-hide feature of the Windows taskbar to squeeze another 30 pixels in the vertical direction.

With the tips applied, Eclipse on a 1024 x 600 screen looks like the following:

(Link to full-size image)

Solution 3

i hope this will help - Extended VS Presentation plugin for Eclipse

Solution 4

You could try the somewhat more compact "Eclipse 2.1 Style Presentation" under General -> Appearance. In the same place, you can put "the Perspective switcher" on the left side.

But no theme can change the fact that a 10" screen simply is too small for a multi-view IDE like eclipse. Pretty much the only way to get around this is to use it more like a traditional editor, i.e. banish all views except the editor to the fastview bar and learn to use hotkeys as much as possible, e.g. Ctrl-O instead of a spearate outline view, F5, F6 and F7 instead of the icons in the debug view, etc.

Solution 5

I use SpringSource Tool Suite which is based on Eclipse. I run this on a 9" notebook. I gave up trying to find a plugin to make the view better but what I have done is right click on every window which docks to the right, left and bottom of the main editing area and selected "Fast View". This minimises these windows to icons on the toolbar at the very bottom of the screen, leaving most of the screen estate for editor windows. It seems to work OK. If I need to access Package Explorer etc. I just click the icon to bring it up, and again to hide it. I find it quite usable.

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