Mozketo » Themes

Mozzie@Night Visual Studio 2008 Theme

Mozketo — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:00:33 +0000

Here’s another VS2008 theme that I tweaked from the theme “Dusk” which is offered by default in Apple’s Xcode.

While I’ve versioned it 1.0 I’d say that this theme is still a work in progress as I’ve not correctly set the colours for CSS, XML and other items.

And you may of course download it from here. Feel free to play with it, keep it, throw it away, and I’m more than happy to see your creations.

Take a look at the vs2008 tag for more themes.

Textmate OS X Typeface font

Mozketo — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:03:38 +0000

I’m in a state of flip-flop aka indecision as I’m trying to find the perfect typeface to use while in Textmate so I decided to turn to the Internets for opinions and recommendations.

So open up your Internet megapipes to 11, take a read and compare the screenshots provided and please leave a comment below.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 12pt

Available from gnome.org/fonts and may also be known as Deja Vu.

Inconsolata 14pt

Available from levien.com. (Note the larger font size to look similar)

Monaco 12pt

Available from a Vista installation near you. It’s amazingly similar to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono but notice there’s more white space above/below each line.

Consolas 12pt

This one ships with Microsoft Office or Windows Vista. This means it’s a license font and I’m not able to supply a download here. But if you were to copy the font files from a Vista machine (or Install Office on your machine) you’d be able to pickup the font easy enough.

While I didn’t want to colour your opinion/decision I will say I am tending toward Bitstream Vera Sans Mono @ 12pt. (I actually use Consolas in Visual Studio 2008 on Vista, it renders very nicely with Microsoft’s ClearType technology).

Mozketo’s Ultimate Visual Studio 2008 Theme

Mozketo — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 04:47:26 +0000

I was pretty sick of the harshly coloured Text Editor that Microsoft provides by default in Visual Studio 2008 and if you’re reading this you probably are too.

At first glance the default colouring appears clean and readable, but over time and on a big piece of LCD glass the sheer amount of white light emitting from the IDE makes me want to code behind shutters, put tinting on the LCD, and wear a welders mask to block out the glare.

On my Mac I love the ease of which you can change themes with TextMate, and being inspired by a theme that @bjeanes directed me to, I found myself wanting to trawl the Internet and find a better theme for VS2008.

I searched and browsed and searched, all the while my searching turning up naught. My poor, watering eyes I didn’t know how much longer I could go with the default theme.

Days passed.

Whilst reading up on MVC in ASP.net I noticed a great looking screen-shotted theme Scott Gu was using in his blog, here. The colours were attractive and low contrast it was immediately appealing and I wanted to give it a try. The only problem was there wasn’t any information about the theme, so I did a little more searching and found this post.

Once loading the theme I fell in love with it immediately but as with all good relationships there was a couple of quirks; specifically with the Selected Text and with the output to the Console window. I played around with the colours and came up with this beauty:

Full credit goes to Scott Gu, and you may of course download my theme and apply to your VS2008 through Tools > Import and Export Settings…

Want more themes? Try this tag vs2008.