Ryan LanciauxNew Media Mercenary

Best VS Fonts / Colors EVER

January 30, 2008 by ryan

Okay the title is a bit over the top :)  Recently I was playing around with the vs settings after reading Scott Hanselman's article on black/white IDE colors and came up with this.  I am still using the Monaco font and a lot of the same ideas, however, I toned down the colors slightly.  Here are some screen shots of various languages in the .NET environment with the 'frickinsweet' settings file applied.

 

C# With the modified settings




VB.NET 




HTML (well... in the context of ASP.NET)

 

F# (I really need to learn this language)




I have put the file for download frickinsweet.vssettings (10.73 kb)

You should get the Monaco or Envy Code R font for best results :)

To install the new settings file:

  1. Click tools
  2. Import and Export Settings
  3. Choose 'Import Selected Environment Settings' and click Next
  4. Backup current settings and continue
  5. Browse to the download location and click Next
  6. The Next screen you can confirm that you're overwriting just the fonts and color and click Finish

Please let me know what you think. 

Update: Rob Conery has an alternative theme for Visual Studio available here.

 

  kick it on DotNetKicks.com

 

Disclaimer: Download this at your own risk.  Back up your current settings before adding the new one -- just to be safe.




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Comments

January 31. 2008 05:52

Sam

I sometimes want to switch to a high contrast Windows theme, but never stick to it. I am stuck with black/dark colors on white. I guess I am stuck in a rut. I do like the font, though.

Sam

January 31. 2008 09:47

Mark Wisecarver

I've tried but have never been able to get used to dark backgrounds.
Have always preferred code windows, vs. design windows.
I'm light blue eyed, so let me ask; do you dark-side guys have brown eyes?

Mark Wisecarver

January 31. 2008 14:55

Joel

I just got this set up. . And I have to say, this is absolutely beautiful.

Makes F# that much better ;)

Joel

January 31. 2008 18:00

Joe O

That's almost exactly what my emacs colors look like on my linux prompt. Are you sure you don't have a spycam setup? Very nice setup.

Joe O

January 31. 2008 18:31

ignu

the thing that sucks about black backgrounds is having to reformat your code every time you want to paste it into outlook or anything else that can take rich text format.

ignu

January 31. 2008 19:58

Rob Conery

Don't you mean "EVAR"? I took a shot at copying TextMate (the famous Mac text editor the Rails guys use) and came up with this...

blog.wekeroad.com/.../

Rob Conery

February 1. 2008 00:21

ryan

@Rob Yea, I thought putting the Caps and the 'EVAR' in the title would just be overwhelming, haha

ryan

February 1. 2008 01:40

Manu Temmerman-Uyttenbroeck

The vssettings file was exported from VS2008, correct? I'm still using VS2005, so I changed the ApplicationIdentity version="9.0" to ApplicationIdentity version="8.0". That makes it possible to import into VS2005.
Do you still have VS2005? Because I'm not really sure if the result I get in VS2005 is the same as you get in VS2008.
If you still have VS2005, could you please give it a try?

Manu Temmerman-Uyttenbroeck

February 1. 2008 04:55

Damien Guard

I think it looks better with Envy Code R (VS edition) as illustrated in this screenshot images.damieng.com/blog/FrickinSweetEnvyCodeR.png

If you like that font it's available from http://damieng.com/fonts/envy-code-r

[)amien

Damien Guard

February 1. 2008 06:40

ryan

@Manu I actually had my computer die on me recently and when I was setting everything back up I only went w/ 2008. I will see if I can't find some way to get that working in 2005 -- anyone else in 2005 have problems?

@Damien That font looks very nice -- I think I'm going to have to give that a try.

ryan

February 1. 2008 08:10

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February 1. 2008 08:25

Chris

I use Jeff Atwoods (www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000682.html), not a big fan of high contrast themes

Chris

February 1. 2008 09:57

PN

Too much contrast in c# settings, however i like html setup...

PN

February 1. 2008 18:32

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February 2. 2008 17:07

foobar

Where has this bizarre notion of a black background come from?

Can anybody provide a link to a scientific study supporting the notion for my enlightenment? Thank you.

foobar

February 4. 2008 15:24

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February 29. 2008 13:46

Josh Schwartzberg

I love the scheme.. but I lose all my helper colors when using resharper.. (like this variable is not being used, etc)

Josh Schwartzberg

March 19. 2008 17:34

Corey

This is pretty bad ass. I went with the dark dark gray background because I was looking underscores. I will try to incorporate your XML styles. Thanks for the tip.

Corey

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