I'm not a fan of both the dark and light color themes offered in Visual Studio 2012.
How can I change colors of the title bar, menu bar, tool bars, etc to make them look like the ones in Visual Studio 2010?
The blue theme has been added back in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2, no extensions required.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797912
Download and install the Color Theme Editor Extension 2012 which works with VS2012.
(It allows you to apply a predefined theme or customise the theme for yourself - but you can choose the 'Blue' theme for a VS2010 style)
(edit: Or use the 'Blue' theme that is now built into VS2012 as of Update 2)
I wrote a blog post explaining in detail how to make VS 2012 look like VS 2010 as much as possible. I will summarize it here.
Replace the new monochrome icons with the old ones and make the menu icons lowercase.
For this you need both the 2010 and 2012 versions installed and the Visual Studio Icon Patcher tool. Start the tool (it's a cmd line application) and enter extract, then inject and finally menus.
Change the color theme to blue.
Download the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor, go to "Tools - Customize Colors" and select the blue theme.
Final result:
It is not exactly like VS2010 but it gets pretty damn close.
Related
Android Studio is my preferred IDE but I've been wanting to customize to my preferences. Two things that I haven't been able to change to my desire is the navigation bar (where there is file, edit, view, navigate,... menus) background color and the sidebar (where the project files are listed) background color in the Dracula theme. Does any Android Studio diver know how to change them?
The background around the Layout Editor in Android Studio is dark grey. I think it used to be white. Anyway, I would like to make it white again, but I can't find the setting. The reason I want to change it is so that I can make nicer looking print screen images to use on StackOverflow or app descriptions.
Note: I'm not talking about changing the theme or the code editor colors. These questions have already been answered here:
How to change or add theme to Android Studio?
How do I change Android Studio editor's background color?
how to change Android Studio terminal background color
Updated Answer
Android Studio 3.0 has a Screenshot menu item. Right click the design area and choose Save Screenshot.
From there you can make a screenshot with a transparent background.
I like the Dark Color Theme for VS2012 but it really annoys me that it doesn´t apply to the Project Properties.
And I can´t find the Properties to change the Color in the Visual-Studio-ColorTheme Editor...
Is it even possible to change these Colours?
GoTo: Tools -> Options -> Environment (General)
you will get the option to change color, only if you've installed the Visual-Studio Color theme editor
Just updated to vs2012 update 2 but I noticed that the text colors have changed for any knockout portions in html. they have very light grey background and this makes it very hard to read. I cant find any thing specific that points to knockout js in the fonts and colors section of the visual studio options so I havent been able to make them readable.
does any one know how to fix this?
In Visual Studio -> Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts and Colors, in the Display items:, scroll down to Knockout region and modify the Item background: color.
I had the same issue. I installed this ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012 and then I got the "Knockout Region" and was then able to edit the style
Just install Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor (300KB)
It will automatically fix the problem for all themes. (Dark, Blue, Light)
It is useful especially if you can't find Knockout Region in Visual Studio -> Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts and Colors -> Display items.
I have difficulties seeing my Visual Studio 2012 window is active. Is there any way I can make the Visual Studio 2012 window behave like a standard window.
Visual Studio 2012 behavior (I can't tell the difference):
Active:
Inactive:
Standard window behavior (much easier to see when active):
Active:
Inactive:
I would like to avoid using the operating system high contrast setting if at all possible.
As #mandaleeka suggested I ended up using the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension.
But an even better highlighting option in my case is to change the "Main Window -> Caption" -> "Active" -> "Background" color.
Here is my resulting theme:
One workaround to this is to install the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension and modify one of the built in themes to change the inactive window border color.
After installing the extension, go to Tools -> Customize Colors. Select a theme to copy colors from, give it a name, and hit "Create". In the color editor, scroll down to the "Main Window" section and under "Inactive" change Border to something that stands out.
Here is an example: