Description Michael Toomim 2002-08-21 16:19:55 EDT

The icons representing different perspectives on the vertical left toolbar in
eclipse are small and hard to distinguish.  This is partly the fault of JDT (the
java and java browsing perspectives look nearly identical).

But I think that some major improvements could be had by allowing text alongside
all or some icons.  As an example, check out the screenshots of Omnicore's
CodeGuide, and look at the vertical toolbar they use to open their application's
sidebar: http://omnicore.com/htmls/screenshots.html

Icons+text have been proven to be easier/faster for people to work with than
either alone, usability-wise, and there's plenty of available space on the
vertical left toolbar to hold the text.  Is there a reason why text hasn't been
included so far?  Is it a widget issue (hard to draw rotated text in a
platform-independent way)?

Oh, and the cvs and resource icons are hard to distinguish as well.  You have to
read the bitmapped characters "cvs" on the CVS icon, which isn't a good solution
for vague icons in general.  If text is needed to distinguish these icons, why
not make it a first-order ui element, instead of hacking it into the bitmaps?