Retain previous open file tab under visible tabs

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'

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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