Eliminate yellow from multi-colored tabs

[janicki]

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.

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

[mbien]

colored tabs will need some rethinking most likely. Changing the background without taking the foreground into account doesn't work very well - and the foreground got more complex over time (e.g #7930). The dark themes are not working very well with colored tabs too.

[mbien]

@janicki btw you can edit those colors in the FlatLaf.properties

tools -> options -> appearance -> flatlaf -> edit custom properties

netbeans/platform/o.n.swing.laf.flatlaf/src/org/netbeans/swing/laf/flatlaf/FlatDarkLaf.properties

Lines 82 to 90 in daa8132

	nb.multitabs.project.1.background=rgb(96, 135, 117)
	nb.multitabs.project.2.background=rgb(135, 101, 101)
	nb.multitabs.project.3.background=rgb(135, 127, 94)
	nb.multitabs.project.4.background=rgb(96, 119, 135)
	nb.multitabs.project.5.background=rgb(121, 135, 89)
	nb.multitabs.project.6.background=rgb(135, 105, 89)
	nb.multitabs.project.7.background=rgb(108, 135, 96)
	nb.multitabs.project.8.background=rgb(107, 135, 38)
	nb.multitabs.project.9.background=rgb(118, 89, 135)

defaults for light theme are here:

netbeans/platform/core.multitabs/src/org/netbeans/core/multitabs/impl/ProjectColorTabDecorator.java

Lines 71 to 79 in daa8132

	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 216, 255, 237 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 255, 221, 221 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 255, 247, 214 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 216, 239, 255 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 241, 255, 209 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 255, 225, 209 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 228, 255, 216 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 227, 255, 158 ) );
	backGroundColors.add( new Color( 238, 209, 255 ) );

[janicki]

That's awesome! Thank you, Michael!!