I have two comments about Eclipse's new user experience, to be released in Eclipse 3.0 M8, shown below:

Source: all trademarks, copyrights, legaleze intact, etc.

1. Why would you go to all of that trouble to make the SWT widget toolkit use native widgets and then not use them (or put a skin over them)? The SWT team should be crying bloody murder on this one, no? Eclipse is SWT's biggest customer right now and if Eclipse goes through with this change it is marginalizing one of the main selling points of the toolkit, namely the native look and feel (at the same time we should realise that this transition required the help of the SWT team). What is SWT's focus? To support Eclipse and its direct plugins or to be a general toolkit?

2. Just at first glance it seems ugly and unnecessary to me. No, I have not used the demo yet. Of course I thought the same thing about the new MSN Messenger interface and when I go back to the old one now it seems quaint in comparison. So I'm not sure ... it would be nice if they would let you toggle it off an on but that likely won't happen. The present "native" flat interface on Win32 looks more professional. If they are making this change just to show off the skinning abilities of SWT I think that's a big mistake. Where is the need?

Judging from the comments left in the bug related to this plan many people aren't happy about the proposed new look and feel. This change could disappoint a lot of people -- it's risky. I sure hope the Eclipse usability team knows what they are doing. Just remember who your customers are: engineers and coders don't need bells and whistles, they just get in the way.

But these are just my first impressions. I'm definitely not a usability person I just know what I like. :) I'll try to get my hands on the demo and give it a go. It appears as though the plan is to introduce the look and feel into the main development branch post-M7.

Update 12:26 Looks like they are changing the Mac interface too:

Source

Skinning a Win32 interface isn't unheard of, but Carbon? Honestly, going anything but native on Mac OS X is just asking for it. I can't imagine you'd get Apple's support. Do you think it follows Apple's Human Interface Guidelines?

When it comes to GUIs it seems like everyone has an opinion. This should be a fun ride.