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TextMate Theme For Visual Studio, Take 2

Previously I posted my modified version of Jon Lam's Vibrant Ink theme (which is a copy of the TextMate/Rails theme), and I've received a lot of queries about it, including some tips and changes.

I've updated this theme, and you can download it here.

Last night I geeked out completely and sat down with my Mac and a color selector, and wrote down all the colors and so forth that make up the really really nice Vibrant Ink theme for TextMate (this is TextMate on a Mac):

textmate

A few things stood out as I was looking over this theme:

  1. Mac's font rendering, while questionable, is really, really nice on the eyes. I really like how it renders Monaco, versus the way Vista seems to render it. Monaco, on Vista, is supposed to be fixed-width, which makes it a good choice for a code editor.
  2. I've changed my mind about using it as I agree with Atwood - Consolas butter's my bread, it's so nice to read.
  3. The current Vibrant Ink theme has too much contrast (for my eyes). I really like the colorfulness of the original, and I like how it's toned down a bit.
  4. Bolding Consolas makes it far better to read on a black background - it also makes it appear smoother.

I adhered as closely as I could (minus Monaco) to the way TextMate does it, and without further ado, here is my updated Vibrant Ink theme:

codefile
A Code file. I'm playing with some mocked MVC bits to get SubSonic ready!

html

ASPX page with inline scripting and server control. Takes some getting used to but hopefully not that long. I tried to set the background to white but they both use "Text Editor" settings so ... no joy there.

output

The output window. Ahh the good old CRT days. This is untouched from Atwood's settings.

You can download the tweaked theme here.

Kevin Isom avatar
Kevin Isom says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Rob, That's great, I love that theme. Just one thing. The file is for VS 2008, and VS 2005 won't let you import it, but if you change to and it works fine. Cheers Kev

DotNetKicks.com avatar
DotNetKicks.com says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Another Vibrant Ink Theme for Visual Studio... You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com...

Kevin Isom avatar
Kevin Isom says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Oops. That should be ApplicationIdentity version="9.0" to version="8.0"

Tomas Restrepo avatar
Tomas Restrepo says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Looks good, Rob. Personally, I've never been a fan of vibrant ink (but then again, I'm unfortunately not a user of the mac & textmate combo!), mostly because it is too much contrast for me. However, maybe if I slightly changed the background and made identifiers in a slight darker (grayer) tone.... I wonder hum....

adminjew avatar
adminjew says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
I am using it since you last post it is gr8

Jon Galloway avatar
Jon Galloway says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The previous TextMate theme had problems with XAML - the background was dark, and so were the words. Have you looked at XAML in this new version of the theme?

Rob Conery avatar
Rob Conery says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
@Jon - What's XAML? :p

Simone Busoli avatar
Simone Busoli says:
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
@Jon: I bet Rob did it by purpose ;)

andy avatar
andy says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Thanks for that... i was getting sore eyes from the white background when coding late at night :)

asbjorn avatar
asbjorn says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Thank you. Looks amazing. Just changed background to very dark blue to reduce black on white contrast and font to BitStream Vera Mono Sans. Also setting the Brace Matching colour to something different is also useful.

CodeClimber avatar
CodeClimber says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
For all the TextMate wannabe: Vibrant Ink for Visual Studio v2... For all the TextMate wannabe: Vibrant Ink for Visual Studio v2...

Damien Guard avatar
Damien Guard says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Mac and PC have different gamma's so a great scheme on one platform won't necessarily be so great on the other even when the exact same colours are chosen especially if it relies on subtle shades. If you like the Mac's softer font rendering try Inconsolata which has a similar appearance on Windows. If you want a scheme for Visual Studio that doesn't have a really dark or really light theme then try my HumaneStudio scheme ;-) [)amien

Alan Patrick avatar
Alan Patrick says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
I've been using it since you last post too. Just one niggle with the new version, underscores are a little hard to make out.

Stuart Allen avatar
Stuart Allen says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
thanks Rob

Ben avatar
Ben says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Was it intended that all the text is bold? I've turned it all off after importing the settings. Other than that very nice!

Ben avatar
Ben says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Doh. Just RTFA! Disregard the bold comment :)

Joe avatar
Joe says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Does it work with resharper? Last time I imported some settings I spent 2 hours getting my R# fonts, etc working.

Denny Ferrassoli avatar
Denny Ferrassoli says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Just wanted to throw out a really great programming font for black backgrounds: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

josh avatar
josh says:
Thursday, October 18, 2007
I started with the last one, but felt like the darkness was a little hard on my eyes, and other devs couldn't read code over my shoulder. So I lightened it up; here is a jpg and the settings: http://www.box.net/shared/itgzt859eg

julian avatar
julian says:
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Hi tanks, Somehow the editor even seems more responsive but I guess that's just my imagination. One little note.. The brace matching doesn't highlight the matched braces. I changed the backgroundcolor and that fixed it.

raffaeu avatar
raffaeu says:
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Very cool theme, but i've changed font to the old Courrier New 11 pt ... ;-) I'm little bit Blind ...

Sandro M. avatar
Sandro M. says:
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Rob, thank you very much for your fantastic job. I have just announced your theme on my blog! Good work!

Daniel Nolan avatar
Daniel Nolan says:
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Lovely theme, ive never been a big fan of high contrast black themes but I thought I'd give it a shot. Absolutely adore it now. One thing that bugs me tho, and I've not figured out how to change the colour yet, is the bracket highlighter, its showing white on light grey.

WooHoo avatar
WooHoo says:
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Great theme, really nice on the eyes. The problem i have is that in the HTML editor i lose the cursor, it stays the same colour as the black background. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

vlad avatar
vlad says:
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Thanks!

 avatar
says:
Monday, December 10, 2007
sandwich bj... Procedure bj sandwich conduct law facts frank sex bj sandwich. Published or Ashley Robbins -- values. ...

Jerry avatar
Jerry says:
Monday, December 10, 2007
Hi, Rob The theme is super cool ^_^ The only problem is cursor is black too. So it can't be distinguished between backgroud? Do you know how to set cursor color to white?

Marco avatar
Marco says:
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Hi Rob! Your VibrantInk V2 scheme looks evry nice, but I don't like these hard and aggressive contrasts between white and black resp. bright/dark, two complementary colors. I tried a little with other colors especially for the background the scheme looks much more smoother and is not so aggressive. Actually I've changed background for Text Editor and Output Window from black to RGB (25, 25, 25) and plain text from white to RGB (225, 225, 225). These are very simple changes and maybe the background could be a little darker and text color a little brighter (but still dark/bright gray) which I haven't tried.

Ivo avatar
Ivo says:
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Great theme ;) ...

Ricardo Stuven avatar
Ricardo Stuven says:
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Thanks for this theme. I've really enjoyed it. My customizations (mostly for better contrast): Selected Text: Item background = Gray Brace Matching (Rectangle): Item background = rgb(96,96,96) Collapsible Text: Item foreground = Gray String (C# @ Verbatim): Item foreground = rgb(232,74,74) Warning: Item foreground = Lime Visual Basic Read Only Marker: Item foreground = Gray XAML Attribute Quotes: Item foreground = White XAML Text: Item foreground = rgb(165,194,92) XML Attribute Quotes: Item foreground = White XML Doc Comment: Item foreground = rgb(124,226,124) XML Text: Item foreground = rgb(165,194,92)

Ricardo Stuven avatar
Ricardo Stuven says:
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Please, ignore my "Collapsible Text" above. ...And Happy New Year! :-)

Rafal avatar
Rafal says:
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Is there a way to import these settings into VS.NET 2003? Yes I know I could upgrade, but current project I'm working on at work requires 2003....

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen avatar
Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen says:
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Visual Studio Programmer Themes Gallery

Steve Cooper avatar
Steve Cooper says:
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Another thank-you for bringing a little bit more pleasure to coding. Very nicely done, and appreciated.

Seth avatar
Seth says:
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Great!

Dan Crowell avatar
Dan Crowell says:
Friday, March 14, 2008
I love the color scheme. Is there a way to use it will SQL Server Management Studio?

 avatar
says:
Monday, March 24, 2008
old black granny sex old black granny sex


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Hi! My name is Rob Conery and I work at Microsoft on the ASP.NET team. I am the Creator of SubSonic and was the Chief Architect of the Commerce Starter Kit (a free, Open Source eCommerce platform for .NET)

I live in Kauai, HI with my family, and when my clients aren't looking, I sometimes write things on my blog (giving away secrets of incalculable value).