JDK8: Getting back the JDK7 look for javadoc

Question

I find it difficult to read the new look-and-feel in JDK8 javadoc compared to JDK7. Here\'s a side-by-side example.

JDK7:

Answer 1

The css used in Java 7's Javadoc can be found here:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/stylesheet.css

You can then use the stylesheetfile attribute from the javadoc commandline, or ant or maven

from commandline:

%javadoc -stylesheetfile  ...

in ant:

in Maven (see Maven's stylesheet configuration page for more details ):

 (or )
    
      
        org.apache.maven.plugins
        maven-javadoc-plugin
        ...
        
          ${basedir}/path/to/your/stylesheetfile.css
          ...
        
      
    
    ...
   (or ) 

UPDATE

Stephen Colebourne has an article about other breaking changes to Javadoc in Java 8 here . Apparently, the doclint now enforces HTML 4 compliance and will not link if the link is broken or not 100% correct HTML 4. You can turn it off with -Xdoclint:none as an additional parameter.

    
      org.apache.maven.plugins
      maven-javadoc-plugin
      
        -Xdoclint:none
      
    
 

Regarding the tags in parameter descriptions, I did see that too. It looks like the parameter descriptions in javadoc are now always monospace so you don't need code tags anymore?