My Visual Studio Settings
Apperantly there are some people who like my color scheme. I am currently favoring a lot of contrast on the screen, it makes me feel like I am working on a child game.
Anyway, here it how it looks like, and you can get from http://www.ayende.com/Files/ayende-vs-settings.zip
Comments
Ouch...
Haven't studies proven that humans read faster on non-inverted type colors?
No idea, the separation of the colors make it easier to notice different things.
You have to take into account that I am rarely reading reams of code, I usually handle small pieces.
Another light-on-dark developer! I usually get ridiculed for my light gray on black scheme. I still don't understand how someone can stare at a white screen for 8+ hours a day.
This is pretty easy on the eyes:
I have a pretty similar scheme downloaded from Infinities Loop (that Viewstate blogger). However it isn't peppered with as much peach, pink and purple as your scheme is :p
I've also gotten rid of Courier New for my font; I use non-constant width fonts (usually Tahoma) as I find it makes it easier to read (and the lines are shorter too). I haven't found any practical reason for using fixed-width fonts anymore.
My 3 year old daughter really liked your colors.
Have you tried the Consolas or Monaco fonts? After using any one of them for some time looking at Courier New will seem like being stabbed in the eyes.
You can get Monaco from here: http://www.gringod.com/2006/11/01/new-version-of-monaco-font/
Consolas here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displaylang=en
The dark side: http://weblogs.asp.net/infinitiesloop/archive/2006/08/06/Join-the-Dark-Side-of-Visual-Studio.aspx
Nice scheme. You should definitely try to spice it up a little with the following little secret:
Add a very subtle background color for strings and constants. It well help looking them up, and you'd easily spot code that has too many hard coded constants and strings in it. It will also make a prettier screen because of the added color.
And about the font issue: I personally find Lucida Console to be the most attractive.
My contribution, w screenshot - light, gray-ish colors do best (tan, gold, tangerine, pink, sky blue, ...)
http://tinyurl.com/37sslb