Controlling Views and Editors

Sometimes, you might want to see only the contents of a particular subwindow, such as the editor subwindow. If you double-click the tab that you are interested in, the tab is maximized within the Eclipse window. The rest of the views that were open are minimized and an icon for each one of them appears on a sidebar in the Eclipse window.

Minimized views

You can make other views visible by clicking an icon in one of the sidebars.

To return to normal, double-click the tab again. You can do this with any view within Eclipse.

To change the relative size of views and editors within Eclipse, move the mouse to the boundary between them, then grab and drag the boundary.

If there is more than one view in an area of the screen, multiple tabs are shown.

Multiple views

You can move a view from one area to another by grabbing and dragging its tab. As you move it around you see visual clues to show how it would be located. What is not immediately obvious is that you can drop it outside the main Eclipse window so that it becomes a freestanding window. To undo that, just grab and drag the tab back to the main window.

Many views have a toolbar across the top, some with icon buttons, and some with a downward-pointing triangle which gives access to a menu. On some, such as COBOL Explorer, you can use this to set filters that change whether certain types of item are shown in the view. So, if your view is getting a bit crowded, you can explore the filters by clicking Customize View.

Customizations and filters

There are many more views available in addition to those that are shown by default. To see all of the views that are available, click Window > Show View > Other. Alternatively, click the Add View button, Add view, which by default is in the bottom left corner of Eclipse.