TextMate Theme For Visual Studio, Take 2

Wednesday, October 17 2007 - Blog

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:

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. I've changed my mind about using it as I agree with Atwood - Consolas butter's my bread, it's so nice to read. 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. 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 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 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 says:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Oops. That should be ApplicationIdentity version="9.0" to version="8.0"

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 says:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

I am using it since you last post it is gr8

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 says:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

@Jon - What's XAML? :p

Simone Busoli says:

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

@Jon: I bet Rob did it by purpose ;)

andy says:

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Thanks for that... i was getting sore eyes from the white background when coding late at night :)

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 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 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 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 says:

Thursday, October 18, 2007

thanks Rob

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 says:

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Doh. Just RTFA! Disregard the bold comment :)

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 says:

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Just wanted to throw out a really great programming font for black backgrounds: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

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 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 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. 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 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 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 says:

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Thanks!

says:

Monday, December 10, 2007

sandwich bj... Procedure bj sandwich conduct law facts frank sex bj sandwich. Published or Ashley Robbins -- values. ...

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 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 says:

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Great theme ;) ...

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)