Platform and Equinox

Here are descriptions of some of the more interesting or significant changes made to the Eclipse Platform for the 4.33 release of Eclipse. They are grouped into:

We also recommend to read the Tips and Tricks.


Views, Dialogs and Toolbar

Pin debug Inspect pop-up

The pop-up dialog that is displayed when calling the Inspect debug action now offer a menu to Pin it so it remains visible even when focusing on other UI elements.

This can be convenient for example when comparing similar expressions, but in different debug contexts (different applications, different launches or different threads).

Pinned Inspect dialogs

Text Editors

Overlay for Performing Find/Replace Operations

The find/replace dialog for performing search and replace operations within an open editor now appears as a seamlessly integrated overlay on top of the editor. By default, it performs a "search as you type" and opens with the replace bar collapsed, thus focussing on the mostly used search functionality.

Find/Replace Overlay with Replace Bar Collapsed

The replace bar can be opened on demand using the expand button or with the according keyboard shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + R).

Find/Replace Overlay with Replace Bar Opened

This overlay includes several search options that can be toggled on or off either through keyboard shortcuts or by clicking the corresponding icons in the overlay. The supported search options are:

  • Icon for Search Option: Case Sensitive Case sensitive search (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + C)
  • Icon for Search Option: Whole Word Whole word search (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + W)
  • Icon for Search Option: Regular Expression Search for a regular expression (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P)
  • Icon for Search Option: Search in Area Search in a selected area (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + A)

In case you prefer the old find/replace dialog, you can disable the overlay in the preferences under General -> Editors -> Text Editors. You can also change in the preferences whether you prefer to have the overlay appear at the bottom instead of the top of the editor.

Preferences for Customizing Find/Replace UI Appearance

The overlay keeps a history of the past searches and updates the history everytime you perform a search. Searches by "search as you type" will not be stored to the history. You can also navigate the history using the arrow keys up or down.

Example for Search History in Find/Replace Overlay

Multiple Lines in Text Editor Code Minings

Code minings in the Eclipse text editor now support drawing text over multiple lines.

Multiline code minding drawn correctly

In previous releases line breaks were ignored and the complete text was drawn in one line only.

Multiline code minding drawn in one line in previous releases

This paves the way to render code suggestions as Ghost-Text in the Eclipse text editor.

Preferences

Show / Hide Active Editor Name in Window Title

Up to now the workbench window title can be customized to display workspace name, perspective name, full path and product name. The active editor name is shown as a part of the window title but could not customized. This can now be customized on the General -> Workspace preference page via the Show active editor name checkbox.

Show Editor Name

Themes and Styling

Preview Version of Improved Light Theme

After many years of stability we have reworked the light theme of Eclipse to follow more modern design principles, similar to other major IDEs:

  1. Lightweight view tab design
  2. Flat look - No use of 3D gradients
  3. Views use a darker background color.

These improvement are not yet completed but are available as a preview.

Preview Theme

You can try it out by selecting Light (Preview) on the General > Appearance preference page. See issue #2114 for more details and the motivation behind these changes and to give your feedback.

The improvements in the Light (Preview) theme will be integrated in the standard Light theme once ready and the Light (Preview) will be removed again.

General Updates