I created this color scheme a while ago but had not posted it yet. Distant Shores is a low-contrast color scheme with a dark background.

I've been using it for a while now and it's fairly usable (particularly on a bright screen); though it is a bit different than most of my other themes. It's (loosely) based on the Stormy Seashore color palette, with a few additions for contrast and provide basic coloring to user types in C#.

Code:

XML:

As usual in most of my schemes, this one is using Damien Guard's Envy Code R VS font.

Visual Studio 2005 version.

Visual Studio 2008 version.

Color Scheme, Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) handles some of the Font and Colors settings differently from VS2005. While Orcas can import .vssettings files generated its predecessor, there are a couple of problems:

1. Custom colors for User Types and C# @"" strings don't get imported. This is because the name of the settings in the exported files changed between versions. For example, the setting for Delegates was named "User Types (Delegates)", but it is now called "User Types(Delegates)" (notice the missing space!).
2. Visual Studio 2008 introduces a whole new set of settings for XAML. This seems like a pretty needless thing to me, because all but three of the new XAML settings have direct counterparts in the XML color settings (only those dealings with XAML markup extensions are really new).

As I had spent quite a bit of time creating the several Visual Studio 2005 Color Schemes that I've made available here, I had no desire to spent a lot of time porting them and fixing the problems mentioned above.

Instead, I spent half an hour creating a simple XSLT that you can run on a .vssettings file exported by VS2005 and generate a new one with the above problems fixed. For the XAML settings, the XSLT will copy the corresponding XML options and for the three new settings (XAML Markup Extension Class, XAML Markup Extension Parameter Name, and XAML Markup Extension Parameter Value) it gives them "reasonable" values from other options.

Download PortVSSettings.xslt.

Update: To run the XSLT without writing any code, you can open it up in Visual Studio and use the XML -> Debug XSLT option. Then, choose your .vssettings file as the input and you're done! (thanks to Brad Wilson for reminding me about it!)

Note: The template will only likely work with fairly complete customizations. This is because of the way the Visual Studio Import/Exports Settings tool works: It won't export any color options that have the "default" color.

Because of this, if have customized Visual Studio but some of the colors the XSLT looks for are missing because you left in the default value, it will not do the trick.

Visual Studio 2008, Color Scheme

Now that Visual Studio 2008 has been released and I've installed RTM, I spend a little bit of time porting all my different Visual Studio 2005 Color Schemes so that they work correctly with 2008 (importing the original VS2005 .vssettings files worked, but didn't quite import schemes completely).

I've now added to each color scheme post a new download link to the 2008 version of the scheme. Here's the complete list:

• Desert Nights
• Ragnarok Blue
• Ragnarok Grey
• Nightingale
• Garden of Eden
• Moria Alternate
• Dark Grey

Visual Studio 2008, Color Scheme

This is my latest Visual Studio 2005 Color Scheme: Desert Nights. This one features a dark background that isn't quite black (it has a slight hint towards brownish/greenish), and colors that stand from the background but without being too bright (most of them, at least).

Code:

XML:

I've been using this one for the past three or four weeks and I'm liking it quite a bit so far, and it is certainly different from the ones I've made before. Download.

Update: Download Visual Studio 2008 version here.

Color Scheme, Visual Studio

As many of you know, I spend time every now and then coming up with new color schemes for Visual Studio 2005. It's fun, and having a good color scheme can make all the difference in the world to your eyes when spending long times in front of your screen writing code.

I use dark backgrounds, so it was always painful to switch to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio to write SQL code, because I had not configured a custom color scheme there. I also didn't want to have to spend more time doing so, particularly since Management Studio has no Import/Export Settings wizard.

Enter VSColorsToSql

This is a simple utility I wrote last night that will port your current VS2005 Fonts And Colors Settings (just for the code editor, mind you) to Management Studio. It's nothing fancy, so all it does is copy some registry settings around. Here's my current scheme:

It does make some assumptions and and a few changes: Turns out the SQL and XML editors in VS use different settings than the corresponding ones in Management Studio! Hopefully, the mappings I selected will give you something usable as well.

Just to be on the safe side, you can export your existing Management Studio settings by backing up this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\
Tools\Shell\FontAndColors\{A27B4E24-A735-4D1D-B8E7-9716E1E3D8E0}

You can download the code from here.

Visual Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, Color Scheme