Colour schemes for Visual Studio
The default syntax colour/color scheme in Visual Studio seems to be stuck in the 16-colour era so once you’ve found your perfect font you are going to need a great theme to go with it.
Here is the theme I’m currently using at home (currently on a 42″ 1900×1200 LCD TV until I can find space for my monitor) that a couple of people have asked for.
To to take full advantage of this theme you will need to download:
- Envy Code R for the syntax font with the italics hack
- PalmOS for the output window’s tiny text
Alternatively you could remap it to your coding font of choice (but you won’t get italics because of limitations within the Visual Studio IDE).
Download Humane Studio theme (2KB, 14 Oct 2007)
Head to Humane Studio at Studio Styles for VS 2010
To use simply unpack the zip file and go to Tools > Import and Export Settings from Visual Studio (2005 and later).
Humane is now available for TextMate & Xcode 3.
If this scheme doesn’t appeal to you then why not try:
- Thomas Restrepo’s schemes (dark backgrounds, my favourites)
- Scott Hanselman’s scheme (dark background)
- Scott Hanselman’s list of themes
- Jeff Atwood’s schemes (dark & grey backgrounds)
- IDE Hot or Not (many schemes)
- Rob Conery’s port of Vibrant Ink
[)amien
24 responses
Yesterday I posted my color schema as well, inspired by Rob Conery’s one (which I guess is quite similar ScottHa’s one)
http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2007/10/12/Pimping-my-Visual-Studio.aspx
Thanks Damien!
Great font and great theme. My two new best friends :)
This is the first time I’ve moved away from the standard VS theme and I must say I do like this theme. It’s so much easier on the old eyes!
[...] As a bonus I’ve created a variant that overcomes Visual Studio’s aversion to italics by marking the italic font as bold. Choose ‘Envy Code R VS’ in the Font and Colors part of Visual Studio’s Options and choose bold wherever you want italics. Here’s a sample at 10 point/ClearType with my own color scheme: [...]
[...] Here it is at 11 point with my Humane theme: [...]
Any chance of getting a version of this for Eclipse? I’d love to use this with Android Sans Mono.
[...] course what you really want to know is how the new version looks in Visual Studio with that lovely Humane theme of [...]
[...] Damien Guard’s Humane [...]
Here’s one of my own which I call “Indigo”…
http://qualcode.com/eBlog/post/2008/02/My-Visual-Studio-20052008-Theme–Indigo.aspx
- Wil
[...] Humane theme for Visual Studio is getting a fair bit of traffic today courtesy of Scott Hanselman. Given I have been messing with [...]
Excellent! Thanks for this.
[...] Damien Guard's Humane [...]
[...] Damien Guard’s Humane [...]
[...] As well as regular and bold variants this version includes a full italic version too and the obligatory italic-as-bold hack to get italic syntax highlighting in Visual Studio as shown here in my favourite 10 point with my Humane theme. [...]
Rock On Damien. Very nice theme. It has the feel of a canvas.
This is my vbsss:
http://idehotornot.ning.com/index.php/index/show?id=158009935
Hi,
I usually resist any changes to the IDE, but this theme was too fantastic to skip. So so so much easier on the eyes, and the italics really help clarify matters. Thank you for sharing this.
rouftop
Is it possible to get these themes to work in VS2010 or has the format changed? I tried to import this in 2010 and it caused VS to crash until I restored it to default.
I think that is because the PalmOS font is not supported in VS2010 as it is a bitmap font. Uninstall that font and it should work.
[)amien
Hello Damien, thanks for the awesome font & VS color scheme. They rock! =D
[...] With VS 2010, these problems are just harder to get around. The new version adds yet more color-coding, all of which is useful. So this time, I tried a few of the compromise themes…. Ones that aren't based on black/near-black backgrounds. The most interesting of these turned out to be a theme called HumaneStudio: [...]
Excellent theme… Been using it since the first time I imported it.
[...] Damien Guard’s Humane [...]
[...] Then there’s enhanced colours and font styles. Another from the website above is a rather nice colour scheme, very pleasing to the eye, even relaxing in a way:http://damieng.com/blog/2007/10/14/colour-schemes-for-visual-studio [...]