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Oct 16 2008

Charcoal Visual Studio Settings

For awhile now there has been a quiet “movement” among developers with regards to the color scheme they use in their Visual Studio text editor. Specifically, many developers are going away from the out-of-the-box white background to black or some-form-of-dark backgrounds.

For me, I haven’t used a white background in a long time; it’s too bright for my eyes. The background color I’ve been using is sort of a soft beige, just enough to take the edge off. I haven’t used a dark color scheme yet, mainly because I haven’t found one I like and because when I read web sites with dark backgrounds it kills my eyes and I see spots or lines for several minutes afterwards.

But that has now changed. Somehow last night I came across Brad Wilson’s dark color scheme and gave it a try. After spending a few minutes with it I realized my eyes had adjusted quite well and I had come to really like it. As I spent more time with it I made quite a few tweaks, such as lightening up the background, using a different color for strings, and changing/softening up some other colors. Using Jeff Atwood’s comparative code sample, here’s a screenshot of what my color scheme looks like:

ArcwareCharcoalConsolas2008

The mono-spaced font I’ve used for years is Lucida Sans Typewriter (size 10), but I’ve switched to Consolas for the time being (shown above in size 10, but I actually use size 11). You can download these settings by grabbing the .vssettings file and importing them into VS 2008. Don’t worry, the .vssettings file only contains fonts and colors, so it won’t munge any other custom settings you might have.

If you’re interested in seeing other color schemes, check out this post by Scott Hanselman and the IsYourIDEHotOrNot site. Enjoy.

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  • http://nino.net/blog Nino Benvenuti

    I like your mods to the theme.

    Perhaps it was this that got you to look at Brad’s theme: twitter.com/…/961660330

  • http://arcware.net Dave

    Nino – ah yes, your tweet was it, LOL. Thanks for that.

  • http://bradwilson.typepad.com/ Brad Wilson

    I’m glad you guys are enjoying the theme. I really like the mods you’ve made, Dave!

  • J.W.

    very nice theme, I just tried and thanks for sharing.

  • Hemant Purkar

    Hi dave, Can you post VS 2005 version of your scheme if you have one?

  • http://arcware.net/my-top-5-posts-of-2008-sort-of/ My Top 5 Posts of 2008, Sort Of

    RE: Charcoal Visual Studio Settings

    I’ve never actually written a “Top X Posts” post to end the year before, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll do one this year. As Phil points out , “I find that somewhat narcissistic, so you know I’m going to do that”.

  • http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/arcware/~3/499496811/ My Top 5 Posts of 2008, Sort Of

    RE: Charcoal Visual Studio Settings

    I’ve never actually written a “Top X Posts” post to end the year before, so I figured, what the heck