Twilighter Color Scheme for Visual Studio Express 2005
For code that is easy on the eyes
Revised 06.JAN.09

After using the default VSX Color Scheme for months, I realized that its brightness was putting an excessive burden on my vision and I decided it was high time to halt the demise of my "Optical Tool". I did some research via Google first -- just to have an idea of what other programmers use -- and not surprisingly, most of them stick with the default Color Scheme that ships with Visual Studio. However, I did come across a small (yet vocal) minority who have embraced the so called "Dark Side of Visual Studio".

Basically, that means that they use a scheme whose colors are mostly "dark". The rationale is, by avoiding bright colors, the programmer subjects his/her eyes to less light and therefore less strain. Well, here is my contribution. My scheme was created on Visual C# Express 2005, but I believe the .VSSETTINGS file is compatible with newer versions of VS as well....(?)



Comments:

The background is (obviously) black, since that's the part of the IDE that takes more screen area and therefore should be toned down the most. All colors in my scheme have low Saturation levels. That ensures the text looks "smooth" against the black background.

My favourite fonts for coding are "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" and "Dina Programming Font". Both are free (as of this writing) and can be easily found in "The Tubes". For the sample above I picked "Dina" size 8 because it looks clearer at small sizes, but i usually work with "Dina" at size 10 or "Bitstream" at size 14 (click on the image above to see what it looks like). I use the latter when working on smaller monitors.

There's no harmony in the scheme as I have purposedly gone for a design in which the code stands out in a contrasting fashion. The Twilighter Color Scheme can be downloaded here. For more Schemes, visit: Is your IDE Hot or Not.