June 20, 2009 — Thomas ten Cate

Since I was feeling creative today, I decided I would work on some cosmetic issues in EclipseFP that have been bothering me for a while. They make the whole thing look unprofessional and out of tune with the rest of the Eclipse environment. Luckily, Eclipse has a User Interface Guidelines document for me to follow.

I started with some icons. The Guidelines specify precisely how they should look. The icons used in the Package Explorer are now in the same style as their Java counterparts:

Note how the Haskell source files have a nice lambda icon, and the literate source file also has its own icon. The Haskell project itself has a subtle lambda overlay. (I see now that I missed the Libraries icon. Also, the text “[GHC]” should be dimmed. Made a note of these.)

Editors, too, get the new icons:

And finally, the one that I’m most proud of. I figured it would be nice to have the new official “lambda-and-bind” Haskell logo somewhere. And what better place for this than the icon of the Haskell Perspective? So I brushed up my pixel painting skills and drew a variant of the Haskell logo that blends in with the Eclipse environment:

It’s always there, subtle, but visible, recognisable and fresh. I like it.