Retain previous open file tab under visible tabs

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11255389

  •  18-06-2021
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Question

Eclipse Juno - In my workspace I have 'Package Explorer' opened on the left side, on the right side I have 6 visible file tabs and under 'Show List' I have 17 files.

Out of those 6 visible file tabs, I'm working on the 3rd file (abc.java) and If I pick up a file under 'Show List' (xyz.java), then eclipse displays xyz.java as active tab and the next 5 files from the Show List. My previous visible file tabs are gone and now I have a new set of visible file tabs. Is there a way to have my previous active file 'abc.java' under visible file tabs with my current active file as 'xyz.java'

Was it helpful?

Solution

I think I just had the same problem and I solved it by switching the theme.

Go to Preferences -> General -> Appearance and switch to the Classic theme.

I can't understand why this helps, but it worked for me.

Update:

After being bitten by this again I checked again and as @anweibel says in his answer this can be edited in the CSS.

I just installed the E4 CSS editor plugin using the Eclipse Marketplace so that I could change the CSS directly from Eclipse under Preferences -> Apperance. I changed swt-mru-visible from false to true so that the relevant part for the GTK theme looked like this:

.MPartStack {
    font-size: 11;
    swt-simple: false;
    swt-mru-visible: true;
}

A restart was required for the changes to take effect.

More info can also be found here: Eclipse tabs repositionning

OTHER TIPS

There's a more straight-forward way to bring back the old tab behavior of the eclipse Juno editor:

  • Go to INSTALL/plugins/org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.qualifier/css
  • Choose the CSS for the theme that you use
  • Replace swt-mru-visible: false; with swt-mru-visible: true;
  • Restart eclipse (I haven't tested if that's necessary, at all)

If that doesn't work, also look in INSTALL/configuration/org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme/ for CSS files.

If you have a look at the css files of the different themes, you can see why switching the theme solves the problem as well.

=> http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse4/CSS

Here is a quick update for anweibel's answer for Eclipse Luna:

The CSS you wanna edit is now located at

  • INSTALL/plugins/org.eclipse.ui.themes_1.0.0.qualifier/css

Quick Linux fix for all themes:

cd <eclipse install dir>
find . -type f -name "*.css" | xargs grep 'swt-mru-visible: false'  | cut -d: -f1 | xargs -n1 sed -i.orig 's/swt-mru-visible: false/swt-mru-visible: true/'

This will find all CSS files with "swt-mru-visible: false", back them up with *.orig suffix and change to "swt-mru-visible: true"

You can find all backup files with"

find . -type f -name "*.orig"
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