Coding Horror: Is Your IDE Hot or Not? - Mozilla Firefox

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.NET and human factors by Jeff Atwood

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September 14, 2006

Is Your IDE Hot or Not?

Scott Hanselman recently brought up the topic of IDE font and color schemes again. I've been in search of the ideal programming font and the ideal syntax colorization scheme for a while now. Here's my current take on it.

As you can see, I've finally given in to the inevitability of ClearType. Someone pointed out the zenburn vim color scheme in the comments. I think it's a nice dark background yin to my light background yang. So I set it up as an alternative for the dark background enthusiasts.

Try these IDE color schemes yourself. Download the exported Visual Studio 2005 Fonts and Colors settings files:

• Download Jeff's scheme (2kb)
• Download "Zenburn" scheme (2kb)
• Download more schemes, and contribute your own, at the Is your IDE Hot or Not? site.

To import, use the Tools | Import and Export Settings menu in Visual Studio 2005. But be sure you have the necessary fonts installed first-- Consolas for the main font and Dina for the output console font.

Here's how to export your own IDE font and color settings:

• Tools | Import and Export Settings...
• Select Export
• Click the All Settings node to unselect everything in the tree
• Expand the tree to "All Settings, Options , Environment"
• Click the "Fonts and Colors" node
• Click next, name the file appropriately, and Finish.

What we really need is for some enterprising coder to create a "Hot or Not" site for IDE color schemes, where we can post screenshots and downloadable *.settings files for our preferred IDE color and font schemes. Update: Matt set up Is your IDE Hot or Not? on Ning.

If we're posting comparative screenshots, it might be a good idea to use the same code sample in each one. Here's the code sample I used in the above screenshot, which highlights some potential programming-specific font legibility issues (O vs. 0, I vs. l, etcetera).

#region codinghorror.com class Program : Object {     static int _I = 1;      /// <summary>     /// The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog     /// THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG     /// </summary>     static void Main(string[] args)     {         Uri Illegal1Uri = new Uri("http://packmyboxwith/jugs.html?q=five-dozen&t=liquor");         Regex OperatorRegex = new Regex(@"\S#$", RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace);          for (int O = 0; O < 123456789; O++)         {             _I += (O % 3) * ((O / 1) ^ 2) - 5;             if (!OperatorRegex.IsMatch(Illegal1Uri.ToString()))             {                 Console.WriteLine(Illegal1Uri);             }         }     } }