Al Nyveldt

 Give Visual Studio a new look with a custom theme

-   Apr 17, 2008 -   Development, Software -   dev tools, visual studio

I've been asked a few times recently about my Visual Studio look and decided to share about it here.  Visual Studio gives the developer a lot of control over how the development environment looks.  From my experience, only a small percentage of people actually take advantage of it, but it is sometimes nice to change things up a bit. Finding a Theme The easiest way to give Visual Studio a "makeover" is to download someone else's custom Visual Studio theme and import it into your environment.  My current theme is based on Ragnarok Grey by Tomas Restrepo.  Tomas is a master dev environment themer and has made a bunch of Visual Studio themes.  That said, the best place to start looking for your theme is likely at Scott Hanselman's VS Theme gallery post.  Scott has put together a nice list of VS Themes along with pictures and links. Installing a Theme Once you've found a theme that you like and found a download link, you should have a .vssettings file.  (Note: Make sure you get the file for the version of Visual Studio you are using.  They can be converted, but that is another topic.) Now, you simply need to import it in Visual Studio.  Luckily, there is a simple Visual Studio wizard to walk you through the process and make a backup of your current settings should you want to go back to what you have now. The wizard is found under the Tools menu and the option is called Import and Export Settings.  In 3 simple steps, you chose import settings, save your theme (or skip), and then browse out to find your downloaded theme and apply it. Customizing a Theme The changes from a downloaded theme can be pretty dramatic and you might want to tweak it a bit.  You might want the font size smaller or larger.  Maybe just a different font.  You might all find that you have some things that just don't look nice. Head on into options (Tools...Options) and make the changes that you need.  The Fonts and Colors sections gives you a nice preview of what you'll be getting for the different types of items. My theme As I mentioned earlier, I've been using pretty much the stock Ragnorak Grey theme.  I have made a few small changes for ReSharper 4.0 EAP.  The theme didn't cover the ReSharper Styles and a few of them were just unreadable.  So if you a ReSharper guy or gal, you'll likely need to check those ReSharper display items and make sure they are readable in the theme you choose.

 Restart: Setting up the new laptop

-   Mar 29, 2008 -   Software -   dev tools, utilities

I recently picked up a new laptop.  After getting Vista installed, I made list of everything I'd need to get started.  Most were from my head as I use many of these things daily, while others I noticed from my work machine, after I had made the list. Software Camtasia Studio - I use this for my screencasts now.  I love this program. Daemon Tools Lite - ISO support is always needed, especially around installing time. Digsby - This is my IM client of choice these days.  I wish the twitter support was better though. FireFox - Do I need to say anything else?  This has its own section below. FoxIt Reader - Much nicer than Adobe Acrobat Reader for my needs. Guild Wars - One game to rule them all... Live Writer - The best blogging tool I've seen yet. NotePad++ - My text editor of choice these days. Office - Word, Excel, PowerPoint,... you know the drill. Paint.NET - A great free .NET based graphics program. PDF Creator - Great for making PDFs. Skype - IM and Voice chat.  A must have tool these days. SQL Server - It is an occupational hazard. UltraMon - Multi-monitor support at its best. Visual Studio - Both 2005 and 2008 installed. VMWare Workstation - I prefer it to Virtual PC. Window Clippings - A nice little screenshot maker. WinZip - I know there are lots of others but this is what I'm using.  With all the other new stuff on my box, you can consider this my "comfort food" software. Witty - My Twitter client of the day.  The current beta works fine or me, but I'm not completely sold yet.  It is .NET based and open source, so I could look into the changes I'd like to see, I guess. Development Specific Things ASP.NET MVC - An alternative to ASP.NET Web Forms in its current state. MbUnit - Unit Testing Framework of choice.  (I'm interested in trying xUnit, but I haven't yet.) Ragnarok Grey (VS Theme) - My current favorite Visual Studio theme.  Both for VS2005 and VS2008 ReSharper - A awesome tool.  I've been using the early 4.0 with 2008.  So far, so good. Rhino Mocks- Mock objects anyone? While it doesn't need installed per se, I like to have the files in a known place. SVN Bridge - The only way to use Subversion at CodePlex. TestDriven.NET - Great testing add in Tortoise SVN - Great Subversion Client Visual SVN - TortoiseSVN that works perfectly inside Visual Studio WinMerge - Nice Comparison Utility Browser Specific things IE Extensions IE Developer Toolbar Fiddler FireFox Extenions Adblock Plus Download Statusbar Firebug FireFTP IETab Remember the Milk for Gmail Web Developer Toolbar Well, that is what I've downloaded and setup to start.  I have a lot more stuff installed elsewhere, but I decided to start with the basics and add things as I need them.  I'm sure there will be plenty of adding over the next few weeks.  If I've completely missed something that I shouldn't be living without, you can let me know in the comments.