Never hide tabs in Eclipse? I would like to have smaller tabs also

Question

I cant find anything related in the settings while searching "tabs". I dont care about the hiding feature so much, because I always loose the context, when all the sudden a tab disappears. The order of tabs gets mixed up visually.

Answer 1

Window > preferences > General > Appearance: Show traditional style tabs (for smaller tabs)

Answer 2

Not exactly what you are asking for, but have you looked at Eclipse Mylyn? I think it will solve the underlying problem you have. With Mylyn you define a set of tasks and the editor will remember what tabs you had open for each task. As you switch between the different tasks, the context will be remembered.

I've used it on some projects and if you often switch between different jobs (i.e different defects) it is really helpful. Especially when you need to go back to a six month old task/defect. The problem usually is that you need a task repository, either connect to an existing one such as bugzilla, or create a local one.

I'd say it's one of those Eclipse plugins that have the potential to drastically improve work efficiency.

Answer 3

Window > preferences > General > Editors > TextEditors

Contains settings for some tab properties.

Answer 4

In Eclipse Juno, you can make the tabs somewhat smaller by changing the font size of the tabs themselves. Browse to this folder:

ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400/css/

Then open the css file that is appropriate for your platform. On Mac OS X, this file is called "e4_default_mac.css". Then edit the following css rule:

.MPartStack {
    font-size: 9;
    font-family: "Droid Sans";
    swt-tab-renderer: null;
    swt-simple: false;
    swt-mru-visible: false;
    swt-tab-height: 22px;
}

Restart Eclipse. You will now be able to see more file tabs before they are clipped.