Update: I have Visual Studio 2008 versions, thanks to Tomas Restrepo's XSLT to convert 2005 colors to 2008 colors.
Another Update: Gustavo Duarte has adapted my theme and made it available in his online source colorizing tool Iris Syntax Highlighter.
Inspired by a combination of Scott Hanselman's post and a wayward image to dead blog post (via Jeff Atwood), I spent about 30 minutes customizing Visual Studio last night for a dark color scheme that I like:
The only thing I'm not sure about is how well this will project, so I'm going to keep the settings files handy to flip between this and my normal "black-on-white with presentation tweaks".
You can download Visual Studio 2005 settings dumps for it here. It contains two versions of the settings: one if you want to use the Monaco font (not provided, shown above), and one if you want to use Consolas (also not provided, not shown). It looks very good with either font, IMO.
Updated: Here are the colors, in case you have problems importing the .vssettings file:
| Item Name |
Foreground |
Background |
| Plain Text |
(224,224,224) |
(24,24,24) |
| Selected Text |
(0,0,0) |
(102,204,102) |
| Inactive Selected Text |
default |
default |
| Indicator Margin |
default |
default |
| Line Numbers |
(128,128,128) |
default |
| Brace Matching (Highlight) |
(248,248,248) |
default |
| Brace Matching (Rectangle) |
default |
(0,0,128) |
| Code Snippet Dependent Field |
default |
default |
| Code Snippet Field |
default |
(0,64,0) |
| Comment |
(192,128,192) |
default |
| CSS Comment |
(192,128,192) |
default |
| CSS Keyword |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| CSS Property Name |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| CSS Property Value |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| CSS Selector |
(254,241,169) |
default |
| CSS String Value |
(96,255,96) |
default |
| HTML Attribute |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| HTML Attribute Value |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| HTML Comment |
(192,128,192) |
default |
| HTML Element Name |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| HTML Entity |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| HTML Operator |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| HTML Server-Side Script |
(254,241,169) |
default |
| HTML Tag Delimiter |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| Identifier |
(254,241,169) |
default |
| Keyword |
(128,128,192) |
default |
| Preprocessor Keyword |
(128,128,255) |
default |
| String |
(96,255,96) |
default |
| String (C# @ Verbatim) |
(96,255,96) |
default |
| User Keywords |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| User Types |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| User Types (Delegates) |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| User Types (Enums) |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| User Types (Interfaces) |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| User Types (Value types) |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| XML Attribute |
(199,199,241) |
default |
| XML Attribute Quotes |
(96,255,96) |
default |
| XML Attribute Value |
(96,255,96) |
default |
| XML Comment |
(192,128,192) |
default |
| XML Delimiter |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| XML Doc Comment |
(192,128,192) |
default |
| XML Keyword |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| XML Name |
(95,95,216) |
default |
| XML Text |
(248,248,248) |
default |
| XSLT Keyword |
(244,122,0) |
default |