Anybody else find Visual Studio 2012 hard to read? - visual-studio-2012

I find the new UI very hard to look at after a few minutes. They seem to have gone to give it a low-contrast look so reading the text is very difficult.
Anybody found a workaround to get a VS2010 look but still take advantage of the new stuff in .net 4.5?

Change theme to Light to Dark. (Options > Environment > General)
Change toolbar font / BG colour. (Options > Environment > Fonts & Colours)
Try to use themes.

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Visual Studio 2012 Dark Theme Issue

I've been using the Visual Studio's Dark Theme for a while now. But as of today it got messed up. I'm not sure what triggered it but I'm speculating that opening an MVC3 project corrupted something. Please see the current behavior below.
How do I get this fixed?
Edit:
The issue is that the "Item foreground" and "Item background" settings gets set to something OTHER than "Default".
The fix is to go to Tools > Options > Environment - Fonts and Colors and setting the said properties to "Default".
Well, I fiddled with the Tools > Options > Environment - Fonts and Colors options for a while and managed to restore order. I'm not sure what messed it up initially!
I have had a lot of issues with the dark theme in VS2012. In order to make it work again I go to Tools -> Options -> Visual Experience and switch it to a different theme and then apply the dark theme again.

How to set text colour in android apps

I am a complete newbee to android and Java programming, although I have done quite a lot with c and c++. I am working my way through some tutorials at present. I hope you will bear with me if I ask what may be a simple question to most. I have been trying to find out how to set a font colour in android apps (I am using eclipse IDE), in the same way that the background colour can be set using android:background="#88FFFF00" for instance.
In the xml just put:
android:textColor="#88FFFF00"

How do I use visual studio 2012 dark theme with windows 8 high contrast theme?

When I use a standard Windows aero theme in Windows 8, the VS2012 lets me to choose between light and dark themes, but I created myself a convenient high contrast theme in Windows 8, and now there is only a greyed option in the VS settings that says "high contrast", and I cannot change it.
I belong to the few people, who like the new dark theme of Visual Studio, but unfortunately I can't use it with the new high contrast Windows themes.
Can someone help me with this one?
My colleague found a way to use the Dark theme in Visual Studio when Windows uses the High Contrast mode. He followed these steps:
Export this registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\Themes{1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}
(this should the key of the Dark theme)
In the exported file replace the GUID of the Dark Theme ({1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}) with the GUID of the High Contrast theme ({a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7}):
Import the reg file
Start Visual Studio. This works for him. It's even possible to mix theme settings from the High Contrast theme with those of the Dark theme. Just replace one of the subkeys content with one of the subkeys of another theme.
The GUID's for the themes appear to be the same on both our systems. But you should always check them before you try this. Also a backup of the keys is recommended!
Here's the register change that changes the high contrast skin into the dark skin in Visual Studio 2015. By applying this file you can use the dark skin when Windows runs in High Contrast.
USE AT OWN RISK!!!
Export the reg values for the High contrast and Dark skin from
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\Themes\ (You can see which one it is at the value from the name field)
Change the GUID in the Dark Skin export to the GUID from the High Contrast skin export. (Use "Replace All" to do this) (The GUID looks something like this: {a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7})
Addition: Copy the values from the Workflow Designer part of the High Contrast skin export and paste it in the Dark skin export (this layout is better than the Dark skin layout for this designer)
Save the changed Dark skin export and execute it while VS2015 is not running.
I made a PowerShell Script for this because I kept having to update the registry values with every update.
This is for Visual Studio 2015. You would just need to update the location values for the others.
$HighConstrastTheme = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\Themes\{a5c004b4-2d4b-494e-bf01-45fc492522c7}"
$DarkTheme = "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\Themes\{1ded0138-47ce-435e-84ef-9ec1f439b749}"
Remove-Item -Path $HighConstrastTheme -Recurse
Copy-Item -Path $DarkTheme -Destination $HighConstrastTheme -Recurse
As you've found, the High Contrast theme in Visual Studio is automatically linked to enabling Windows' "High contrast" mode in "Ease of Access".
While you can't change themes while that mode's active, you can still change some color settings (editor, windows, etc.) directly via Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Fonts & Colors. Many settings come directly from Windows, but you still have some options here.
Not for this scenario, but just FYI for anyone intrested in tweaking themes, the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension is pretty handy. Scott H. has a post on using it.

Aptana 3 PHP var colours not updating with theme

How can I get my php vars to match whatever theme I am running. They seem to stay black even if I switch to say.. Choco or nightlion themes. It's really annoying and I just can't see anywhere in the theme menus how to change php var colours.
Any help much appreciated :)
I found the setting! (On a mac, it appears this might be different on other os's)
Prefs > PHP > Editor > Syntax Coloring.
From here I was able to alter the variables etc colours for PHP docs

Moving from coderush to resharper

I am about to make the switch to resharper from coderush after using it for 30 days and have some questions I would like to see if I can get some help on.
1: Can you change the resharper code colors? I tend to prefer dark themes so I would like to be able to migrate to a dark theme once the change is complete.
2: Do any other addin provide the member icon paint functionality of Coderush? It is the only feature that I do actually miss as it is handy for scanning. I don't mind paying for the functionality if it works.
EDIT: Found out how to change syntax colors.
There's no direct replacement of "paint member icons" in ReSharper.
I suggest that you use the File Structure window instead, with "Track caret in editor" and/or "Automatically scroll to source" options on to synchronize between focus in File Structure and the caret in the text editor.
As to other VS plug-ins, to my knowledge there aren't any prominent plug-ins that have that - neither VS10x CodeMap nor Productivity Power Tools provide anything similar.
1: Can you change the resharper code colors? I tend to prefer dark
themes so I would like to be able to migrate to a dark theme once the
change is complete.
As well as being able to change Resharper colours (In Tools->Options->Fonts and Colours, look for the "Resharper *" related options), R# supports Visual Studio light and dark themes:
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/webhelp/Managing_Color_Themes.html

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