Tuesday 9 October 2007

Curvy tabs in your Eclipse RCP Application

You might have noticed that the default look and feel of your Eclipse RCP application is slightly different to what you are used to while using Eclipse IDE. Many developers want to have exactly the same "Curvy" shape of tabs for the views instead of "lame" square ones. There are two ways of achieving that.

Way 1: The proper one. Depending on the version of Eclipse platform you are using, you have to edit (or create) either preferences.ini or plugin_customization.ini file in the root of your defining plugin. Add the following line to that file:
org.eclipse.ui/SHOW_TRADITIONAL_STYLE_TABS=false
and voila!

Way 2: The working one. I have no idea why the previous (proper) way of parameter definition fails sometimes. I have found a neat fix for the problem: you might want to set this workbench preference in your application workbench window adviser.
In ApplicationWorkbenchWindowAdviser.java add the following line:

PlatformUI.getPreferenceStore().setValue(IWorkbenchPreferenceConstants.SHOW_TRADITIONAL_STYLE_TABS, false);

to public void preWindowOpen() method. and everything will begin to work like magic!

Good luck!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you. Very well done. Just what I needed.

Dave

Unknown said...

The fist way works, but you have to define a product with the 'preferenceCustomization' property (don't change the name of the property!!!). For more details have a look at http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/RCP_FAQ#How_can_I_change_the_default_UI_settings_for_the_perspective_bar_location.2C_fast_view_bar_location.2C_etc.3F

Any way great tip, thanks a lot!!!

Yorgos

Anonymous said...

You rock Vlad, thanks

Odracir Num Ira said...

Thanks a lot. I have been looking for this for days.