Bug 539296

Summary: Views as vertical tabs instead of icons
Product: [Eclipse Project] Platform Reporter: Ankur Jhawar <ankurjhawar15>
Component: UIAssignee: Platform-UI-Inbox <Platform-UI-Inbox>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P3 CC: alois.zoitl, ankurjhawar15, daniel_megert, stephan.herrmann, wim.jongman
Version: 4.9   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: Other   
OS: Windows 10   
Whiteboard:
Bug Depends on: 58945    
Bug Blocks:    

Description Ankur Jhawar CLA 2018-09-20 11:56:14 EDT 
This is a feature request.

Today in eclipse we have horizontal tabs for views (like Project explorer) and when we minimize they become icons.

When we look at the same on intelliJ IDEA we can see views vertically and with complete name of the view. This helps the users in general if they are not aware what is meant by icons.

So may be if possible you can consider this change as that would be very handy.

Screenshots:
IntelliJ : https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iGx_GWwdk00/maxresdefault.jpg
Eclipse : https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mik_Kersten/publication/220093228/figure/fig1/AS:394078450667527@1470967032863/The-default-Java-perspective-in-Eclipse-Window-A-is-the-Package-Explorer-view-window-B.png
Comment 1 Alois Zoitl CLA 2018-10-17 12:01:02 EDT 
Interestingly today I was about to post the same request. My show-case would have been not intelliJ IDEA but LibreOffice. For me one of the most usability and performance boosts in the recent libreoffice improvements have been the right sidebar with several vertical tabs. These are extremely easy to navigate as the right screen-border fulfills Fitts's Law for buttons [1]. Furthermore with the tabs on the side even more tabs are using little screen real-estate but they are also better readable.

However currently there is work needed on SWT (see Bug#58945) before we can do first experiments in the Eclipse IDE or in RCPs. The latter I'm interested in. 


[1] https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/#fittsLaw