Damn. The article's title had given me hopes of a nice SCSI rant and then it turns out to be something completely different. Oh well.

Back on topic in an irreverant fashion: yay for vim!

I liked this for the couple of hours my eyes could stand it
http://weblogs.asp.net/infinitiesloop/archive/2006/08/06/Join-the-Dark-Side-of-Visual-Studio.aspx

"avoid too much contrast"

This requirement may indicate a miscalibrated monitor. Since I got into the habit of setting up monitors using photographer's test patterns, I've been able to use black on white with no discomfort or glare. Plus, my photographs look really nice as well.

Hmm, another couple of thoughts (probably stating the obvious)...

- Avoid complimentary colours (eg: red on green), as they will throb in and out and cause dyslexia-like symptoms in the normal-sighted.

- Your eyes have maximum acuity in the red and green, so blue is not very good for either text or background (only about 10% of receptors are blue, IIRC).

- There seems to be a sweet spot for font size, where text is easier to read if it matches the size you read most commonly.

Can you explain your color choices, please, Jeff?

I like Proggy Clean TT SZ.. it's a phenomenal font.. much better than Consolas and Dina IMO

http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download

i've already posted my color-scheme 1 or 2 years back in the past on this site.
but here again my default color-scheme with the given text from above:
http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/969/codinghorrordo5.png

@jeff: you have forgotten to #define something ;-)
why don't you use black as background ? white background color hurts in my eyes -.-

I really like the green on green output window. Nice.

I'm using jEdit. One day, I tried different color scheme. One of them was in inverted color : dark gray background with light gray text. And I never changed : it is more relaxing and less agressive for my eyes :)

I'm with FlorentG on the dark background / lighter text. That's one of the few mods I've made to my VisualStudio settings, and one of the first I make to my Emacs settings.

Jeff - I just imported your settings and I think that they're fantastic and a huge improvement over what I was previously using.

I don't get it. Radioactive green highlighting with an extra uglified font for easier reading?

I use good ol' vim for editing.

My syntax highlighting colorscheme is 'zenburn' which is freely downloadable off the 'net, and my font is bitstream vera sans mono 7.

Clean, low-contrast, and easy to work on.

IBM3270 is similar to Consolas and Proggy Clean. Found it accidentally on IBM laptop and has been using it ever since. The file name is pcsansi.fon.

Zenburn is pretty cool, thanks for posting a pointer to that. Screenshot here:

http://slinky.imukuppi.org/zenburn/

An excellent example of not too much contrast in action!

> Can you explain your color choices, please, Jeff?

- I like black on white, so I start with that
- I've always used dark blue for keywords and dark red for identifiers
- Beyond that, I was shooting for a "highligher" effect, using traditional blue, yellow, and green highlight markers.
- I believe numbers (blue) and strings (yellow) should have fairly strong highlighting, because they're unusually significant in code. I like a background color for strings so I can see whitespace better.
- I like traditional green on black for my console output windows, and it also breaks it apart from the black on white code editing window.

I'm not saying these rules should apply to anyone else but me, but FWIW and since you asked. ;)

just Visual SlickEdit in vim mode. and i really, really never had any use for multiple background colors. makes an editor look like a video game; although not so much as your garden variety IDE does. i don't like video games either; well except FreeCell. to which i return for normal programming.

I compared some sans-serif non-monospace fonts, because it seems I’m the only person in the whole world that actually uses them for coding :P

http://porg.es/blog/sans-serif-fonts-for-coding

Of course, if anyone else does, I want to hear from them to find out what they use :)

Someone at my favorite forum (donationcoder.com) started a thread comparing 18 monospaced programming fonts. Others responded with even more screenshots, and websites. I won't repeat them all here.

If you are interested: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=2499.0

I've always used an off-white for backgrounds, just because when you're staring at something for hours, the cooler it is (white and yellow are the hottest) the easier on your eyes. Pale lavendar or mint usually. I've gone through phases of wanting everything to be the same hue, though; pretty, if rather painful.

Oh, and although the eye might be better at picking up greens, monitors seem to be better at displaying a wider range of discernable blues. Maybe it's just because of greater sensitivity, but monitor greens seem to quickly go from murky to neon without much in between.

I think your 'hot or not' site for VS color/font schemes is a great idea. You know, if the server hosting the site had a lot of fonts installed (especially the ones popular with programmers), you could write a little function that uses GDI+ to return a jpeg of a 'virtual' screenshot, and eliminate the need for the user to create and upload one.

Here's my IDE (Eclipse) -- I guess I like my coding cheerful.

http://sputnik.pl/pies/fun/pies-eclipse.png

And here's one of Edit+, my text editor (dark):

http://sputnik.pl/pies/fun/pies-editplus.png

I've been using roughly the same color set for Windows programming since I got my first programming job (an internship back in college). I saw someone coding with bright colors on a black background and fell in love. Most of my programming has been in Visual Studio, and with the advent of VS2003, which gave me the freedom to choose colors other than the EGA 16, I managed to find a combo from which I doubt I shall ever (willingly) stray.

I strongly urge anyone to try it out who is discontented with their current scheme. Here it is, as I originally formulated it for C++ development.

Code window:
* Background = black
* Text (identifiers) = gray
* Operators = white (bold also, if it's hard to distinguish from the gray... admittedly the separate color for operators is less advantageous in C# than it is in C++, because in C++ code parentheses and braces are considered operators, but in C# they are not)
* Numbers = blue (something lighter than the EGA blue, which tends to be blurry against the black unless you have an LCD or very crisp CRT)
* Strings = Magenta or purple
* Keywords = red
* Preprocessor directives/keywords = yellow
* Comments = green or teal

And for the output window, simple light gray text on black background.

It's easy on the eyes, which is hugely important. And it makes it trivial to identify the nature of just about any program symbol just by glancing at it.

I wish I had a blog so I could post a picture. =(

use imageshack.us waterbreath ;-)

Thanks hacktick. I must have been really out of it earlier not to remember that, or to notice all the imageshack URLs in other posts.

Anyway, here's my color scheme in C++ code:
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/6972/cpluspluscolorshl1.gif

And here it is for C# code;
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/3641/csharpcolorsew4.gif

Nothing too spectacular or original. Just a black background and colors that are easily distinguishable from one another.

I threw in a preprocessor directive to illustrate that. I'm not a fan of the link being underlined in my code, but I assume I could change that in the settings. Unlike the fact that the "user types" aren't highlighted in the C++ code, and the parentheses and braces aren't highlighted in the C# code. I guess you can't have everything.

Oh, and regarding non-monospace fonts.... I got a taste of that when I learned Pascal on a Mac in high school, because it was the IDE's default. Hated it. I cannot program in non-monospace fonts. I don't know what it is, but code in non-monospace font doesn't look like code to me. It looks like gibberish.

Pro Tip: When using LCD monitors you should probably set the screen brightness as low as possible, to the darkest setting. That's easily bright enough for desktop work with most monitors. In fact I'm using a slightly darkened Adobe Gamma profile (the app came with Photoshop I think) on top of using the darkest setting. Most monitors are absurdly bright by default.

Here's mine, with the help of Resharper:

http://caffenero.net/wp-content/uploads/personal/IDE.PNG

looks cool!

Hi,
I can only reccomend all to stay away from white font on darf background on notebooks and PDA's for a simple reason: glare.

My Acer has a glossy, reflective screen - and when the screen is black, it reflects much more...

Best regards
Tam Hanna

I cannot for the life of me find where to change the background color in the VS 2k5 code window.

And why is the word always orange?

Hmmm...

You know, I had this pet project in my mind... a VS addin to manage color theming, with support for Resharper and -- more generally -- custom highlighters...

This plugin would have a decent UI (live preview, color swatches, drag n' drop, etc.) and should allow to save/load palettes from/to a centralized online repository, with voting capabilities :)

On the implementation side, I'd use the wonderful DXCore framework, and code the whole thing in c#1.1, to maintain compatibility with the gloriuos VS.NET 2003

I still have to fine tune the details, maybe you fellow programmers could help and suggest features..

BTW: I know there's VSStyler out there, but ...it's too basic, IMHO. No offense to the author, of course.

Regarding fonts: I like to use variable-width fonts rather than fixed-width ones. Rationale: I read far more code than I write, and variable-width fonts are easier and more comfortable to read. Fixed-width fonts are a little easier to select with precision during editing, but this isn't a big deal for me.

On Windows, with ClearType turned on, Verdana and Tahoma are my favorites. Tahoma 10 pt. works well for me: it's a decent size on the screen but fairly narrow.

On colors, aside from using light gray, I haven't fiddled with the schemes. I've always thought it to be too much trouble and barely noticeable, but the good points on this thread may change my mind.

I almost always use a dark blue background color scheme.

http://www.uesp.net/images/bluecode.png

It was the color scheme of the first IDE I used with color highlighting (Turbo C++ v3.0 for DOS) and I've gotten so used to it that it is hard to look at anything else.

I used the blue background color scheme similar to Dave's because that's how QBasic was setup when I first started programming. So when I got to "real" editors I naturally setup that same color scheme.

However, a while ago I gave in to the classic white bg because I wanted more color coding and you can only use so many colors on a blue bg and have it not kill your eyes. It was a weird change switching from light/dark to dark/light scheme, but now looking at a light/dark setup really hurts me eyes.

I have to say that I've never heard of anyone purposely using variable-width fonts for software development. I'm curious; how do you deal with lining up declarations? How about indenting and lining up braces or "begin"/"end" pairs?

The only way I could think to handle this is with tabs. But traditionaly tabs are Considered Evil, as they line up differently in different editors.

Re: the app - shouldn't take too long to whip this up at ning.

well, that didn't take long:
http://idehotornot.ning.com/

There's yer website - fresh, empty and waiting for settings.

Hmm, I can definitely see how the black background would be tough in a sunlit environment, or with those newfangled glossy LCDs. Hadn't thought of that. But then again, I'd fight tooth and nail not to have to use one of those glossy LCDs outside my darkened gaming room.

Thanks for those blasts from the past Dave and Brian. Some of my earliest forays into programming were using QBasic and then later Borland's Turbo C++.

That said, I don't think I could go back to the blue background, especially with today's high-res screens. It's just too hard to focus on anything but high-intensity colors against that blue, and even then to me those are sort of hard to distinguish. Which is why I prefer the black.

I get a lot less eyestrain with dark backgrounds than with bright ones. It seems strange to me that some people find the opposite.

To submit to peer pressure, I've uploaded a partial screenshot of my emacs screen at <a href="http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6481/colorizedemacssg3.png">http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6481/colorizedemacssg3.png</a>

For my tastes, Waterbreath has the right idea. However, his gray text color would be *way* too dim for me to deal with, and the other colors are too bright. I think its important to keep the contrasts on the various colors similar, or you end up de-emphasising things that you don't want de-emphasised (like the actual code!). I also want to keep the contrasts themselves down a bit. Enough that I can make out the letters with no problem, but not so much that I can close my eyes and still make them out. :-)

That ning site is pretty cool. I added my RGB scheme to the list, and I added a Vibrant Ink clone scheme. Is it possible to make the images show up larger, though? It's *really* hard to tell what the scheme looks like when the screenshots are so small..

Ted, variable width fonts seem to work fine with both tabs and spaces (auto-converting tabs to spaces, etc.), for regular indending and brace/block alignments.

I generally don't try to line up things that have text to the left of them (end-of-line comments, etc.). Such formatting can be attractive sometimes, but I find I don't really miss it, and it's extra work to maintain anyway.

I've tweaked my color scheme for months, until coming up with the following one:

<a href="http://www.slibe.com/image/14e268a8-jedit-gif/">http://www.slibe.com/image/14e268a8-jedit-gif/</a>

I really like jEdit, and feel somehow sad and dull when I *have* to go to VS 2005 to do some .net work (I've even considered working on my .net projects in jEdit and do without VS 2005 advanced ide features).

I also tried to set-up eclipse as my "editor of choice" but somehow it didn't work, it just lacks a lot of configurability and "editor feel" that jedit offers.

I guess rewrite of jEdit in ruby with new YARV ruby vm would be my ideal environment :)

I like those looks, Zenburn definately has some mileage with a lighter background, and especially thanks for the Dina font!

My problem is that I do a fair proportion of work via a Remote desktop connection in XP, consequently ClearType doesn't work and Consolas looks shocking!

That's a good one, Esad. My only critisism would be that the comment color is kind of faint. That would be a good thing when I'm just trying to read the code, but a bad thing when I need to read the comments. I'd suggest you instead make the comments the same contrast as the normal code, but a color unlike anything else. In your case, perhaps green? That way you can mentally tune in or out that color as needed.

The only stuff I think you can generally get away with making low-contrast is text strings. If you are editing files with a lot of strings (lists of error messages, etc), or where code is embedded in strings (regular expressions) it might not apply there either.

All-in-all, yours probably better than mine though. I'd say the extra time you put in paid off.

------------------
I'm not sure I get the http://idehotornot.ning.com/ thing. I can't figure out how to rate things, which is probably good as I can't figure out how to view them full size either. Perhaps one has to get a login to do these things?

> consequently ClearType doesn't work and Consolas looks shocking!

Yeah, this is a problem with all the C* fonts in Vista. They're explicitly designed to work with ClearType and look pretty horrible if ClearType is disabled for any reason.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000356.html

> as I can't figure out how to view them full size either

The ning site doesn't appear to let us store full-size images :( If we can get that fixed (Matt?) then it's golden.

http://idehotornot.ning.com/

I think a lot of times, the monitor you're using is a big factor in what colors look good to you.

For example, T.E.D.'s color scheme is nice. I like the fact that it isn't blazing with color. However, on an LCD, which tend to have limited contrast, everything runs together. The key-lime-pie green is too similar to both the aqua and the tagboard yellow on my screen. On a CRT, I suspect things would be a bit different.

As far as my dark gray, the only reason I didn't use a the lighter "silver" gray is because it was too close to the white I use for operators. I've toyed with using teal instead of gray, and having a mellow orangish color for "user types".... But in the past I liked having my "regular text" uncolored. Maybe I could use gray for my comments though. I think that would be a better fit for them.

I suppose I'm not as attached to my scheme as I thought. If that idehotornot thing can support full size pics eventually, I will keep it bookmarked in hopes I run across something that blows me away again.

That's a very important point about the monitors, WaterBreath. Your monitor can make a huge difference. As an extreme example:

Here at work I use 2 monitors side-by-side for the extra desktop space. I had to scrounge them up though, so they don't match. The one on the left is a relatively new NEC MultiSync LCD (2080UX), and the one on the right is a very old Gateway Diamondtron CRT (vx1120). I had just the CRT for years, and honestly thought I was slowing loosing my sight, until I hooked up the NEC next to it and saw it was the *CRT* that had gotten fuzzier.

Anyway, since the new LCD is much crisper, I typically put my Emacs window in it, and use the other monitor for supporting windows (eg: VisualStudio).

When I took my screenshot and posted it at <a href="http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6481/colorizedemacssg3.png">http://img238.imageshack.us/img238/6481/colorizedemacssg3.png</a> I brought it up in my browser to look at it. The colors looked horrible and I could barely read the text. I started to write a complaint about imageshack messing up the images, when I remembered and drug it over to the left screen. Presto, it looked just the same as in Emacs. Doh!

After that, I've had to remind myself to make sure my browser is displaying on the NEC side before I comment on you guys' colors. :-)

I'm a big fan of the oceandeep color scheme for Vim:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=368
It's a very pleasant light-on-dark; here's a screenshot from the author:
http://www.tomsdiner.org/vim/oceandeep/index.html

Ning.

How does it work ? I can't seen to view any of the screenshots properly O_o

Parchment scheme is nice too, had to change it to Dina 8pt though - no clear type :(

I also use a sans-serif non-monospaced font for coding; Verdana in VS2003 and Tahoma in VS2005.

The reason? It makes my code read more like text, rather than code; and the various text fonts tend to be more readable than Courier.

As for lining things up: TABs (instead of spaces) work fine.

J.Daniel Smith,

Tabs work fine until the day that you need to manually edit a source file on a remote location in Notepad/Wordpad/VI/Dos EDIT etc etc !

But if you know you're only ever going to use VS and you're never going to share your code, Tabs are fine :)

There's lots I'd love to add to what Russ said about tabs. I'll just confine myself to saying that if you insist on using tab characters, you *must* add a comment at the top of your source code. This comment should occur before any tabs are used, warn the reader that the file contains tab characters, and inform them how the tab stops are calculated on the tool you view the sources with. That way the poor reader at least has a warning and the information required to make your sources readable on whatever viewer they have available to them.

http://images.jonpero.com/VS.NET_2003_Colour_Scheme.PNG

The comment about dark schemes and glossy LCDs is right on - I gave a couple a try, but I end up staring at my ugly mug more than I really want to. :p

Hey Thanks Russ.

I did Parchment in about 5 minutes of reading this blog. Most people were talking about dark screens but I really dont like them. So I tweaked my settings and came up with a nice light brown background. Kinda looked like Parchment so I decided to send it along to Jeff since I let my own blog lapse.

I have always made numbers red and strings blue. Why? I have no idea but now I am very used to them.

Dark Blue and Teal always looked nice and soft to me so I use them for User Types and Text.

Throw in a version of Maroon and Purple and together you have my Color scheme.

I didn't see this wonderful font mentioned here ...

My IDE font is always Profont:
<a href="http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/">http://www.tobias-jung.de/seekingprofont/</a>

I agree that it's quite small on screen but that's how I like it.

Has anyone tried to edit XML files with "Zenburn"? *yuck*

Jon Perot: I liked your color scheme so much that I made a VS 2005 settings file and posted it to http://idehotornot.ning.com/index.php/index/show?id=2317889.

Oops, remove the "." at the end of that URL to get it to work.

Guys, I tried the ZenBurn and liked it very much. However, nobody is complaining about it not fitted for editing HTML and CSS. Oh, one person complains about XML. I think that themes posted for others to use are required to be usable in most of the schemes, otherwise no one will use them. I'm porting ZenBurn to HTML, CSS and to XML... will posting when finished.

Good work! But ...

Why not try some alternative background color?
Such as HSL(85,90,205), or RGB(204,232,207)?
I've grown tired of white and black and blue, so let's try something refreshing!

My colors are cooler :P

http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/code.PNG

http://wolfsfiles.googlepages.com/EliteText-Exported-2006-12-27.vssettings

feel free to try them out, just gotta download this settings file to your vs 2005 settings folder, and use the import thing somewhere in the options menu, and you can be leet to :P

It seems the IDE Hot or Not site isn't hasn't picked up as much as it might have as there are only 22 schemes available. However I added my ConsoleDOS theme as people have been asking for it from my blog posts.

I was a bit apprehensive about zenburn, but after playing with it a bit I like it a lot now.
The only change I've made so far is to darken the background a bit more. Otherwise the contrast is a little TOO low.

Some more color sets here -- http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/CategoryView,category,VS+Color+Scheme.aspx

I'm liking zenburn, especially in comparison to the rather plain, and eye burning colours it uses as standard, but will these work with VS2008? I'm downloading it now, the Express Edition (glad MS saw fit to have another free version, like with 2005), and would love to have a preset colour scheme file, rather than having to change things manually.

I use the Oblivion theme for gedit (included as standard with GNOME 2.20)

I have VS2005. For some reason, the colors and fonts don't change when I import one of the color schemes. I reset my settings completely and then imported, but nothing. My toolbars however do change. messed up man. any help would be appreciated.

Placebo, take a look at the original Zenburn color scheme file for Vim. There you will find a toggle for greater contrast, and the color values associated with that - you can perhaps copy those if you wish.

Why there's such a toggle? I noticed that in some environments it's better to have a bit more contrast. It depends on so many things, like the amount of ambient light coming through a window, even with the curtains drawn. For summer a high contrast is good, for winter the lower contrast can work better.

Cheers,
Slinky

I made a color scheme similar to zenburn for gedit if anyone was looking for one =)

http://www.nazgum.com/2008/07/06/zenburn-color-scheme-for-gedit/

I wrote a Visual Studio Theme Generator. It's available at:

http://frickinsweet.com/tools

You input 3 colors and a contrast value and it generates a fully configured .vssettings file.

I am using the "Zenburn" scheme and so for I think it looks really good.

A problem I came across is when I am using the F# Interactive tool window, after I have entered text and hit the return key the text stays "off white" while the background is now now white so I can pretty much not see the text, any ideas what setting I can change to make that look more like the output window?

While I am typing the background of the F# Interactive tool window is gray like the text editor. If I highlight the text the background of the highlighted text is a dark green.

Any ideas / help would be appreciated as I would like to continue using this color scheme.

Greatly appreciated, I like a dark background... !

Very nice. I prefer the light [gray] backgroud

How do i revert to the original settings??

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /ResetSettings "C:\Documents and Settings\[PROFILE_NAME]\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Settings\CurrentSettings.vssettings

this on the cmd prompt did the trick.. :-)

What do u think About this?

http://f.imagehost.org/0373/IDE-BCB.png

Thanks! Lovin' it!

This requirement may indicate a miscalculated monitor. Since I got into the habit of setting up monitors using photographer's test patterns, I've been able to use black on white with no discomfort or glare. Plus, my photographs look really nice as well.My syntax highlighting color scheme is 'zen burn' which is freely download able off the 'net, and my font is bit stream vera sans mono 7 I read far more code than I write, and variable-width fonts are easier and more comfortable to read. Fixed-width fonts are a little easier to select with precision during editing, but this isn't a big deal for me.That would be a good thing when I'm just trying to read the code, but a bad thing when I need to read the comments. I'd suggest you instead make the comments the same contrast as the normal code, but a color unlike anything else. In your case, perhaps green? That way you can mentally tune in or out that color as needed.
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Fixed-width fonts are a little easier to select with precision during editing, but this isn't a big deal for me.That would be a good thing when I'm just trying to read the code, but a bad thing when I need to read the comments. I'd suggest you instead make the comments the same contrast as the normal code, but a color unlike anything else. In your case, perhaps green? That way you can mentally tune in or out that color as needed.Awesome. just awesome...i haven't any word to appreciate this post.....Really i am impressed from this post....the person who create this post it was a great human..thanks for shared this with us....http://www.poker-spielanleitung.de

I created a theme settings file based on some of what I liked in other dark themes. A little more contrast than ZenBurn. I also stuck with the default font sizing and style. To me it is the most readable. Some of the themes have such large fonts.

http://blog.rapiddg.com/2009/06/visual-studio-settings-theme/

I tried importing Jeff's theme, but most of the color settings didn't come through. I also tried a 2005-to-2008 conversion using the XSLT here:

http://winterdom.com/2007/11/portvs2005colorschemestovs2008

... but again, most of the color scheme didn't show up.

Has anyone been able to get Jeff's theme working in VS2008?

Is your IDE Hot or Not? is down at the moment, can anyone share the Parchment scheme for me? I've lost my download. TIA!

The white background is starting to hurt my eyes after long periods, but the black I find is also to abrasive.

Does anyone have a exported version of that color scheme, or in leiu, care to share their color schemes thwy find for a developer whic spends about 15 hours a day in Visual Studio?

The white background is starting to hurt my eyes after long periods, but the black I find is also to abrasive.

Does anyone have a exported version of that color scheme, or in leiu, care to share their color schemes thwy find for a developer whic spends about 15 hours a day in Visual Studio?

Here is mine ... I call it calm down :)

http://www.webdevbros.net/2009/07/29/webdevbros-visual-studio-color-theme-calm-down/

really hard to know that.