How to change the color of underline of a CTabItem?

Question

I would like to change the color of the underline of an active CTabItem. The line is black and I want another color, see picture below.

Answer 1

I agree with @greg-449 that normally you should not mess with CTabFolderRenderer but in some cases you have to do that. Luckily, you don't have to write again the entire renderer. This is the code in the original SWT renderer that draws the line:

            // draw a Focus rectangle
            if (parent.isFocusControl()) {
                Display display = parent.getDisplay();
                if (parent.simple || parent.single) {
                    gc.setBackground(display.getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_BLACK));
                    gc.setForeground(display.getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_WHITE));
                    gc.drawFocus(xDraw-1, textY-1, extent.x+2, extent.y+2);
                } else {
                    gc.setForeground(display.getSystemColor(BUTTON_BORDER));
                    gc.drawLine(xDraw, textY+extent.y+1, xDraw+extent.x+1, textY+extent.y+1);
                }
            }

The interesting part here is gc.drawLine(...) . You can let the original renderer draw everything and then you can draw on top of it you own line with a different color.

I just recomputed the arguments. I did cut some corners, and this will not work when text uses ellipses, but it can be a good starting point.

Note: this code might break with the next version of SWT. You have to update it whenever you update SWT.

Here is a snippet where the items have different colors:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    final Display display = new Display();
    final Shell shell = new Shell(display);
    shell.setLayout(new FillLayout());

    final int tabFolderStyle = SWT.NONE;
    final CTabFolder tabFolder = new CTabFolder(shell, SWT.NONE);
    tabFolder.setSimple(false);
    final CTabItem tabItem1 = new CTabItem(tabFolder, SWT.NONE);
    tabItem1.setText("Tab1");
    tabItem1.setData("color", display.getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_CYAN));
    final CTabItem tabItem2 = new CTabItem(tabFolder, SWT.NONE);
    tabItem2.setText("Tab2");
    tabItem2.setData("color", display.getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_YELLOW));


    tabFolder.setRenderer(new org.eclipse.swt.custom.CTabFolderRenderer(tabFolder){
        protected void draw (int part, int state, Rectangle bounds, GC gc) {
            super.draw(part, state, bounds, gc);
            if (part >= 0 && part == tabFolder.getSelectionIndex()) {
                int itemIndex = part;
                CTabItem item = parent.getItem(itemIndex);
                int x = bounds.x;
                int y = bounds.y;
                int height = bounds.height;
                int width = bounds.width;
                boolean onBottom = (tabFolderStyle & SWT.BOTTOM) != 0;

                Point extent = gc.textExtent(item.getText(), SWT.DRAW_TRANSPARENT | SWT.DRAW_MNEMONIC);
                int textY = y + (height - extent.y) / 2;
                textY += onBottom ? -1 : 1;


                Rectangle trim = computeTrim(itemIndex, SWT.NONE, 0, 0, 0, 0);
                int xDraw = x - trim.x;

                gc.setForeground((Color) item.getData("color"));
                gc.drawLine(xDraw, textY+extent.y+1, xDraw+extent.x+1, textY+extent.y+1);
            }
        }
    });

    shell.open();
    while (!shell.isDisposed()) {
        if (!display.readAndDispatch()) {
            display.sleep();
        }
    }
    display.dispose();
}

Answer 2

The standard tab folder renderer org.eclipse.swt.custom.CTabFolderRenderer does not support changing this color.

You can write your own renderer and install it using CTabFolder.setRenderer but this is quite hard work.

I think this line is only shown if the tab itself has focus, making a control in the tab have focus stops it being drawn.