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For the record, I’m not like some big Microsoft fanboy…. However, I work in the I.T. field, and thus dealing with Microsoft products is simply inescapable.  They simply have the largest market share, and as such, most of our clients use Microsoft Windows and Office and their networks are usually an implementation of Active Directory.

That being said, this also means most of my software development is done on Windows using Microsoft Visual Studio (C#).  One thing I got VERY used to in Linux was all my IDEs and code editors were configured using a much nicer color scheme.  I personally prefer darker color schemes.  This bright white background that is the default in Visual Studio, for starters, makes my eyes burn after 8 – 10 hours a day of coding.  So I finally got sick of it and took a look at the VS2008 settings and found that I could make changes to the 4 bajillion possible color settings available and decided that it would take too damn long to tweak each one and play with it until I find the right combination that I like.

Soooo…. and did a quick Google search and stumbled across this site that linked several VS2005 and VS2008 settings files that essentially act as themes.  They are just an export of all the color settings from the author’s Visual Studio configuration.  So just unpack the settings file, then click Tools –> Import and Export Settings… then select Import selected environment settings then save your current settings (just to be safe), then click the Browse… button at the bottom of the import screen and browse to wherever you unpacked the .vssettings file and select to import.  That settings file will contain only IDE color settings, and should not modify anything else, but the import wizard will give you a sort of preview of the changes before you make them, so check them out before pulling the trigger.

I’m currently using BradsDarkMonaco2008 scheme

My eyes couldn’t be happier!!  Not too mention, it gave VS2008 a much-needed facelift.