donderdag 17 januari 2008

Dark Eclipse Java editor

You probably recognise the feeling: you turn on your computer in the morning and the screen hurts your eyes. The white is just too bright for this time of the day (or night if you wish). The problem gets worse if you have to spent at least 8 hours looking at this bright white square.

I had this feeling as well this morning. I write code in Eclipse, which has a default white (yes: #FFFFFF) background. This does not increase productivity since you rather don't look at this hangover booster.


So I let myself be inspired by some other editors and themes and turned Eclipse into this:




To make it look good, make sure the font is set to Courier New 10 points: Window -> Preferences -> General -> Appearances -> Colors and Fonts -> Java editor Text Font

Unfortunately Eclipse does not let you export/import these settings easily. It can be done through File -> Export -> General, Preferences but you have to select 'Export all' which includes a bunch of settings for plugins that other probably don't have.

Another annoying thing is the background color of the folding bar that cannot be changed. The good thing is, someone already filed a bug for this: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=62712 it is only two years old!