Archive for the 'Visual Design' Category
Eclipse UI Real Estate Wasters!
In my last post I showed a mockup of what Eclipse might look like if we made use of a little extra space for layout and graphical finesse. For those who want to run Eclipse on a device with a small screen, I agree that a denser UI is better. But for typical desktop development [...]
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Every pixel is sacred (not any more!)
The Eclipse SDK UI design has always been about maximal use of real estate. We packed those widgets in solid! At the time this made sense given limited screen real estate but as the years have progressed, screens have gotten a lot bigger and a lot cheaper.
Consider the following. In 2001, when [...]
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EMF+CSS=Brains+Beauty (Come see it in London Sept 19)
As Boris wrote, we’ve been hacking this nice little photo app demo. I will admit that I wasn’t convinced of the practical advantage of EMF and the modelled UI until I started seeing the demo come together. Now I’m a believer! Mind you, I really suspect that Ed’s been breaking into my [...]
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CTabFolder, grow a skin buddy
On our E4 quest for a skinnable UI, tops on my hit list is CTabFolder. Presently that curve is carefully represented by an array of integer pairs, which are interpreted as a polyline draw. Fast, but extremely fragile.
The problem is that that curve is a really strong branding element of Eclipse. This was done on purpose [...]
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Declarative styling will change how we think about Eclipse
As part of the e4 incubator effort, we’re looking at declarative UIs, and in particular declarative styling. During the Declarative Styling Roundup call we looked at both CSS and XAML as approaches.
When I’ve spoken to people about declarative styling, sometimes its difficult to convey why this is important for Eclipse, and in particular RCP [...]
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UI Working Group becoming popular venue!
The UI Working Group is a forum for people to discuss Eclipse UI issues. Its available as a sounding board for UI walkthroughs, providing feedback on UI design issues, guidance on best practice approaches, issue of consistency, etc. Its members are UI expects from across the Eclipse community, so you get lots of experience at [...]
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Eclipse shouldn’t look like anything
The e4 summit is coming up end of this week and as I was preparing my position paper for it, I pondered the question,
“What should Eclipse look like?”
I then realized that Eclipse shouldn’t look like anything! It’s like asking, “What should a web page look like?”. Different web pages, geared towards different communities, [...]
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UI BOF at EclipseCon!
We’re having a Usability and User Interface BOF at EclipseCon. Hosts of this event are the illustrious Mik Kersten, the jazzy Kimberley Peter, our fearless UIWG leader Bob Fraser, and yours truly. We’re hoping for good community participation, so bring your ideas, questions, complaints, and of course, beer.
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The Joy of Color (and the Despair of Computing Them)
I have a confession to make: I love color. I marvel at combinations as my pulse quickens. I’m fascinated how different colors come in and out of vogue, and remember olive green kitchen appliances with a combination of sentimentality and horror. When nobody is watching, I sneak onto the Color Lovers website [...]
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Dude, what happened to my tabs?
This is the first in a series of posts discussing the “look” of Eclipse.
In Eclipse 3.3 we decided, dared I might say, to touch an item which many consider sacred, that being the look of the tabs for editors and views.
Our goal was twofold:
1. Add some visual clarity and differentiation to the workbench
2. [...]
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