Very large tabs in Eclipse panes on Ubuntu

Question

My question is very similar to Stack Overflow question Gigantic Tabs in Eclipse on Ubuntu.

I have tried the solutions presented, but they appear to be old. I have found a solution that nicely handles the toolbar and menus, but not a solution that reduces the size and padding of the disproportionately large tabs (and label) within the panes (see the tab "Package Explorer" in the screen below).

I am happy with the way my OS-wide GTK theme is customized and don't want to change that. Is there a quick fix to reduce the tab sizes of the panes in Eclipse?

I'm using Eclipse for Mobile Developers (Juno) on Ubuntu 12.04. I'll also mention that I really like the way Eclipse appears out of the box in Windows 7, so something similar to that would be ideal.

Here are the eclipse specific GTK styles I'm using:

style "eclin" {
    GtkButton::default_border={1,1,1,1}
    GtkButton::default_outside_border={1,1,1,1}
    GtkButtonBox::child_min_width=0
    GtkButtonBox::child_min_heigth=0
    GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_x=0
    GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_y=0
    GtkMenu::vertical-padding=1
    GtkMenuBar::internal_padding=1
    GtkMenuItem::horizontal_padding=4
    GtkToolbar::internal-padding=1
    GtkToolbar::space-size=1
    GtkOptionMenu::indicator_size=0
    GtkOptionMenu::indicator_spacing=0
    GtkPaned::handle_size=4
    GtkRange::trough_border=0
    GtkRange::stepper_spacing=0
    GtkScale::value_spacing=0
    GtkScrolledWindow::scrollbar_spacing=0
    GtkExpander::expander_size=10
    GtkExpander::expander_spacing=0
    GtkTreeView::vertical-separator=0
    GtkTreeView::horizontal-separator=0
    GtkTreeView::expander-size=12
    GtkTreeView::fixed-height-mode=TRUE
    GtkWidget::focus_padding=0
    font_name="Liberation Sans,Sans Regular 8"
}

class "GtkWidget" style "eclin"
    style "eclin2" {
    xthickness=1
    ythickness=1
}

class "GtkButton" style "eclin2"
class "GtkToolbar" style "eclin2"
class "GtkPaned" style "eclin2"

Here is a screenshot of what my IDE looks like with the huge tabs:

Eclipse Juno IDE with tabs too big

user_1562596 · Answer

I also wanted to reduce especially the horizontal space in order to fit more tabs, as Eclipse lacks multi-row tabs.

These instructions will go for any platform (not limited to e.g. Ubuntu/GTK).

What I did was:

Reduced the font size
Changed font to something horizontal-compact
Removed the X (close tab) button

...yielding the following result on my system (Win 7):

Screenshot with modified tabs

...and this is how it's done:

Check what CSS layout you're using: Preferences->General->Appearance-> check value of 'Theme:' listbox
Open the corresponding file in \plugins\org.eclipse.platform_\css, e.g. e4_default_win7.css

Modify .MPartStack entries to set font size and font, e.g.:

.MPartStack {
    font-size: 8;
    font-family: 'Arial Narrow';
    swt-simple: true;
    swt-mru-visible: false;
}

Add the following entry to remove the X (close icon):

CTabItem {
    swt-show-close: false !important;   
}

That's it!

Very large tabs in Eclipse panes on Ubuntu

7 Answers