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Dark theme styling for forms look bad - Based on 2026-03 #3947

@vogella

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@vogella

The form styling for the dark theme looks bad. It uses lot of colors which are not in sync with the rest of the IDE styling and buttons have frequently incorrect background colors, e.g. the Automated Dependencies button in the second screenshot.

Screenshots are from the 2026-03 release:

Image Image

SAP did a big visual refresh of the UI but from the commit history it looks like they skipped the forms styling.

  • 5ed97ff "[Dark Theme] Visual refresh for eclipse" (Madhumitha M V, Nov 2024) — only touched e4-dark_ide_colorextensions.css, e4-dark_preferencestyle.css, and the three platform-specific files (e4-dark_linux/mac/win.css). It did not touch e4-dark_globalstyle.css or
    e4-dark_partstyle.css. This refresh is what introduced the broad .Editor Form Composite { background-color: #1E1F22 } rule (the one that captures FormHeading because FormHeading extends Composite), but it did so without revisiting the older Form { swt-background-mode: 'force' } or the .MPart FormHeading > ... block.
  • 387ec96 "Improvement to the existing Light Theme" (Madhumitha M V, Jul 2024) — only touched e4_default_mac.css and e4_default_win.css. Didn't touch e4-light_globalstyle.css or any FormHeading/Section rules.

To me it looks like forms styling was not part of those redesigns. The Form/FormHeading/Section rules in globalstyle and partstyle predate the SAP work.

@BeckerWdf do you remember if your team also work on the dark theme for the forms API (visible via MANIFEST.MF, plugin.xml, target platform)?

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