[NETBEANS-5698] Improve tab component appearance on Retina displays (MacOS/Aqua LAF)

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 12.2
• Fix Version/s: 12.5
• Component/s: platform - Window System
• Labels: HiDPI pull-request-available

Environment

MacOS with Aqua LAF

• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Eirik Bakke
• Created: 20/May/21 02:12
• Updated: 17/Jul/21 22:10
• Resolved: 17/Jul/21 22:10

Description

The tab components used by the window system on the Aqua (MacOS) LAF have a few visual imperfections when scaled up for Retina displays. It'll be good to fix these, as was done for the Windows LAF in NETBEANS-5673. Since Retina displays are always scaled at exactly 2x, this should be a lot easier than on Windows, where fractional scalings like 150% tend to cause a lot of headaches.

The Aqua LAF otherwise looks reasonably modern. It's fairly consistent with the look of native apps on MacOS Catalina. On MacOS Big Sur, the visual style has changed a bit, with either bright or dark colors depending on light/dark mode (rather than midtone greys), and "glass pane" textures rather than metallic surface gradients. It's probably best to keep the existing Aqua LAF style for now, though perhaps some of the bevel effects could go away to make it look more up-to-date.

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #2970