Here's a color scheme for VS2005 I had created a few months ago but had not published before (I think). Ragnarok is another high-contrast scheme with a dark background, with two variants:

Ragnarok Grey - download for VS2005 | download for VS2008

Ragnarok Blue - download| download for VS2008

Both are using Consolas, 15pt, but feel free to change them (they would definitely look good with Damien Guard's Envy Code R using the italics-as-bold variant). I personally think the blue version looks better, and it is actually quite usable.

Color Scheme, Visual Studio

Here's another Color Scheme for Visual Studio 2005. This one has a dark (almost black) background, but high contrast, playful colors for the most common uses:

It's also my most complete color scheme yet, as it includes very usable configurations not only for the usual (Code, XML, HTML and CSS) but also for things like XSLT/XSD and MDX (and works very nicely for SQL, as well).

This time, I'm using Damien Guard's Envy Code R Preview 6 for my font, which I've found extremely usable and very nice. It has very distinctive features, and contrary to what I expected from Damien's comments about it being mostly oriented to use at small font sizes, I found it very good at 15pt. And I love his "Visual Studio" special version (which I'm using for this color scheme) that presents "bold" fonts using italics instead! The only thing that I do think could be better is the '#' symbol, which, I think, seems too small.

Download EnvyCodeR_Nightingale.zip. Enjoy!

Update: Download the Visual Studio 2008 version here.

Visual Studio, Color Scheme

Here's another Visual Studio 2005 color scheme: Garden of Eden.

Code:

Xml:

This one is based around greenish (teal) colors, and though funky, it is quite usable. Enjoy!

Download Consolas_GardenOfEden.zip

Update: Download the Visual Studio 2008 version here.

Visual Studio, Color Scheme

This is yet another dark color scheme for Visual Studio 2005. This one is based (loosely) on the excellent Moria color scheme created by Georg Dahn that I use for Vim.

There are obviously a lot of differences, as Vim's syntax highlighting is a bit more flexible (and a bit more limited in other manners) than Visual Studio's, but it's not bad overall and I've been pretty happy with it. some difference, though, are intentional, like a slightly darker background color or line numbers.

Here's a screenshot of looking at XML in VS:

Here's a screenshot of looking at code:

The scheme as is is saved using Deja Vu Sans Mono as the font; feel free to replace it with your favourite programming font. Get the settings file here.

Update: Download the Visual Studio 2008 version here.

Visual Studio, Color Scheme

Jeff Atwood posted his own Visual Studio Color Schemes here; I have to say, the screenshots look pretty enticing, and I look forward to trying them out.

Meanwhile, After using the dark color scheme I posted last week for Visual Studio 2005 for some time now, I've been slowly doing some "improvements" to it. This one features a slightly darker background, matching tool windows correctly configured, and changes a few colors. It also uses Consolas instead of Monaco.

Here's what code looks like:

Here's what XML code looks like:

You can download my settings file from here.

Update: Download the Visual Studio 2008 version here.