apache / apache/netbeans

Eliminate yellow from multi-colored tabs

Open
#8,029 9 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Editor kind:feature Look and Feel needs:triage UI
Dominant language
Java
Stars
3.1k
Forks
935
Avg merge
2d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
17

Description

### Description

I enabled the following option:

Tools > Options > Appearance > Document Tabs > Same background color for files from the same project

That's great, but I cannot find a way to edit the tab colors. So the third project is automatically assigned yellow tabs. The problem is that the currently-selected tab background is white, which is surprisingly difficult to find in a sea of yellow. See the screenshot.

![image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/597c38c8-843c-416d-acef-abab1725c504)

There is a lot going on there: different background colors, different font colors, and different font weights. When there are even more tabs, finding the current tab is like a game of Where's Waldo... As soon as you find it, it is "so obvious," but it's a frustrating mystery until then.

So I'd suggest using a more-contrasting theme for the selected tab (at least when the multi-colored tabs option is enabled). **For a quick fix, please just eliminate yellow from the default tab colors.** To be extra-cool, maybe animate (blink?) the current tab whenever the mouse enters the tabs area. (One could argue that blinking would be "thematically" consistent with how the caret blinks in the editor panel.)

### Use case/motivation

It is sometimes difficult to find the currently-selected document tab, when many are open, especially when some tab backgrounds are already light-colored (e.g. yellow) and the selected tab is only differentiated by being white.

### Related issues

_No response_

### Are you willing to submit a pull request?

Yes

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the Tools > Options > Appearance > Document Tabs setting and locate the default tab-color definitions; no file or test is named in the report. Done means yellow is no longer among the default colors and the selected tab is easier to distinguish when same-project coloring is enabled.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
design, desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.