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See the attached screenshot. The two tabs should have the same background color, and the labels should be on the same height vertically. This is a regression from 6.7. Version: 6.8M2.
Created attachment 89123 [details] Screenshot of tabs.
Correction: The different vertical alignment is actually okay and not a regression. It just looked unusual due to the incorrect background color.
that is an intentional change as there are typically many subtabs in output window and it's hard to find the active one. is this really a P3 problem?
In Win classic L&F the only difference of selected tab is slightly different vertical alignment of label. This makes hard to quickly find out which tab is selected (especially in SCROLL_TAB_LAYOUT). That is why this changed was made.
Well, I heavily disagree that NB should make such decisions to deviate from the system's L&F. The different color is distracting, as it doesn't match what one is used to under the Win2K Look&Feel. For me it might even be a reason not to upgrade, because it's so prominent visually. P3 is certainly appropriate.
will HIE team advise please?
As for the priority, according to priority guidelines (http://wiki.netbeans.org/BugPriorityGuidelines), this can be at most P4 (incorrect appearance). As for my opinion as a person responsible for NetBeans UI, this is clearly a problem of Win classic L&F. But while NB is generally trying not to deviate from system L&Fs, in same situations (when appropriate) we do tweak system L&Fs, although it should be done very carefully. I can not say if the chosen color is appropriate (don't have win classic available and don't have screenshot of an entire NB on classic L&F), but I certainly approve use of color to distinguish active tab, even though the L&F itself does not do so.
Getting back to this and suggesting to close as wontfix. Current visual representation (while being far from perfect - but that can be said about classic L&F in general) does not seem disturbing to me. There is one problem though - the active tab is separated from the pane below even though they have the same color, e.g. in output window. But that probably belongs to another issue.
Reopening; some more observations from private mail discussion with olangr: 1) The new color of the active tab is lighter than the "default" UI gray for UI surfaces. Actually the new color looks very similar to the background color of the editor's gutter area, and to the background color of the scrollbars. So in a way this light gray signals "background" in relation to the surrounding tabs, which might be a factor why it looks wrong to me. Compare with the editor tabs (or the Projects/Files/Output panes) where the active tab has the "default" gray (plus a blue gradient when it has focus) while the inactive tabs are darker. 2) The active tab doesn't hide the edges of its neighbouring tabs anymore. This probably enforces the perception from point 1 that the tab is "background" instead of being "in front" of the other tabs. The tabs still have a two-pixel dark right edge, other than the editor tabs, where it is just one pixel and less pronounced on the inactive tabs (less dark thus lesser contrast). The not-hiding of the two-pixel edge of the left neighbouring output tab makes it more prominent, less "not in front". 3) The tabs have become two pixels higher (one pixel more padding both above and below the label text), which makes the text in the active tab look unnaturally high (distance from the tab content), and also closer to the upper edge of the tab, because unlike the previous look the upper edge of the active tab is not higher than the upper edges of the inactive tabs anymore. That's probably why I first wrote that the label position is wrong too, in the issue description. Maybe a viable solution could be to use the same look as the editor tabs.
fixed in core-main a8e3799aa0a9
Verified in 6.8 RC2.