This is something that bugs me every time I setup a new workspace in Eclipse, as I find the default Eclipse highlight background colors quite bland – I think it used to be some light yellow for both of them in previous versions... I decided to post about it this time as it happened a few times already and as odd it might sound I sometimes use the information from my blog (what?), that way I only need to remember there was a solution even if recalling all details.
If you use the “Mark Occurrences” feature, whenever you move the cursor to a member, local variable, method etc. Eclipse will highlight the occurrences in the editor as well as on the side ruler (for easy navigation in a large file). In newer Eclipses I think they even broken down the concept into two types – “write occurrence” for the actual variable definition and “occurrence” for when it is used.
If you want to change the default highlight colours you can do so in the Prefe
rences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Annotations – look for
“Occurrence annotation” and
“Write occurrences”.
You might need to close editors and re-open them to get the new highlight colors.
