Visual Studio Color Scheme
I got a question asking if the color scheme I use in my example code on the blog is an actual Visual Studio color scheme as well and if I could share it. So to answer the first question, yes it is the color scheme I use in Visual Studio, and nah I don’t think I want to share it, err … of course I do 
The color scheme is slightly changed from the original which was “Ruby Blue” (the link seems to be broken now) this was also featured in Scott Hanselmans blog but then I already had it 
For those that do not want to read the whole post, here is the download already: Visual Studio Color Scheme.
First let me show two nice screenshots of the Visual Studio color scheme, the first one is in Visual Studio 2008 and the second one is in Visual Studio 2010. Click on the images for a full size (1900×1200).
Visual Studio Color Scheme in Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Color Scheme in Visual Studio 2010
I really like what this color scheme is doing for my eyes, it is really much more relaxing for me to work in Visual Studio now. When in Visual Studio 2010 it even gets better, there Microsoft even changed their IDE to match my preferences and made the side bars in a similar relaxing color, Yay Microsoft.
There is one issue with this color scheme in combination with ReSharper and that is that ReSharper uses some weird highlighting for to-do’s and that becomes unreadable in this color scheme.
So in order to make this readable again I had to turn this off in ReSharper, the end result is as follows.
Much better won’t you say? Now all you have to do is open the options window of ReSharper and scroll all the way down to To-do Items and select the “Not Implemented” item in the Patterns box and remove it. You may want to open it in edit mode to copy the details, but that is up to you. The other items will give you the same unreadable results so you might want to remove them as well.
ReSharper Options Window
In the download you will find the Monaco font that is used by the scheme and an export of my Visual Studio setting (AdaptedRubyBlueSchema.vssettings). Besides that I also included some ReSharper user templates (ReSharper_UserTemplates.xml).
I like to highlight one of those user templates; one that I think every C# developer should have and that is my Lambla user template. TYpe “x+Tab” and you get “x => x” where x is selected so that you can immediately change the name of x into something more descriptive (will change both ends). When you are done changing the name press “enter” then “.” and intellisense pops up telling you what members x has. How cool is that?
Oh finally I would like to share how I get my code examples in my blog, for that I use a Visual Studio plug-in called “Copy Source As Html” which takes all the formatting and copies it to correct formatted Html, similar as it looks like in your Visual Studio instance.
I was looking for that same exact template this weekend and to my fortune Dylan Thomas from dylandoesdigits.blogspot.com/2009/11/visual-studio-theme-ruby-blue-knockoff.html happened to be sharing his version of the Ruby Blue theme at gist.github.com/236449.
source:
stackoverflow.com/questions/9951/what-color-scheme-do-you-use-for-programming
stackoverflow.com/questions/486158/best-practices-ide-code-color-scheme-and-font
@David Negron
If he has the original then you probably want to change how angle bracket code looks like. Html, Xml and stuff like that was not done very well.
@Mark Nijhof Nope I don’t believe that it is the original. I think he made his own version.
@David Negron
Ok, well I am happy with mine so?
*nod* I think they both rock! =)
No offense meant, but that looks like a terrible scheme >.< The blues are too similar! Specifically, the blues for the access modifiers and the method names. Also, I think the red is not very readable. I like the Ragnarok theme, personally.
@John Bubriski
for everybody their own. I admit that this is not great while working in angle bracket code, but other than that I like it a lot, very quite, unlike many other scheme’s like the one you mentioned that have a different color for everything.
No problem
The ReSharper colours (well, most of them) are customisable too.
Just find “ReSharper Todo Item” in the “Fonts and Colors” list and change it.
@jonf
Ahh cool, I did look for it for a little while but at that time I couldn’t find it, this was a few versions ago do
Thank you