After you’ve looked at Visual Studio all day for a few days in a row, the brightness of the white background can really start to bother you, especially as LCD monitors get brighter and brighter. That’s why I’ve become a big fan of Dave Reed’s Dark Side theme for Visual Studio 2005. It took me a few hours to get used to it, but now I’m hooked.

The only thing I changed was the font. I really like Consolas, size 13. Courier New is Courier-Old-and-No-Longer-Used.

At work, I still have to use VS2003 for a project, and keeping it in the older, white background really helps me distinguish which environment I’m in.