Ugly looking selection in Visual Studio 2012 text editor - text-editor

I've started to use Visual Studio 2012 and there is one feature that really upsets me: the way the selection in text editor looks. For some reason it looks differently for variables and all other text. The same is right for the break-point high-lighting:
Is there a setting to make the selection and break-pointed line appear uniform as in all previous versions of VS and all other editors?

There is no setting for this, but why your selection looks ugly is because you set a background color for given (identifier) types. In Tools*Options*Environment*Fonts and Colors select Identifiers and set Item Background to Default

Related

Highlighting makes code unreadable when searching with VsVim

I've been using VsVim for a while and I have been pretty happy with it. However, the one thing that has been annoying me is the highlighting of text when I do any kind of search in VsVim such using * or the standard search with /.
I've spent hours trying to change the fonts and colors in the Visual Studios options menu, but I haven't found a way to change the color scheme. Below is a picture with the highlight text. Any help on this matter would greatly improve my productivity.
Unfortunately there is a bug in the handling of fonts / colors in Visual Studio that makes it impossible to change the highlight color in VsVim through the standard Fonts and Colors options page. The most recent version of VsVim (1.7.0) added a custom color menu to its option page which allows for this, and a few other, colors to be changed
Just go to Tools -> Options -> VsVim

How can I make Visual Studio window be highlighted when it is active?

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:

What is this "pull down" icon in Visual Studio 2012 text editor used for?

The icon below shows at the top of the vertical scrollbar in Visual Studio 2012's text editor. When I drag it down, another page shows behind the current visible page. It looks like a copy of it. (I am using dark theme)
What is it used for? I don't know what the feature is called, therefore I couldn't search for it. I am not sure if it's native to VS 2012 or it's from one of the VS add-ons I am using.
Sometimes the icon disappears. Why?
It's for split viewing of a file. So you can view part of the file and edit another part.
It's a common feature in advanced text editors.

Visual Studio 2012 find and replace highlight color is not exact

Ok, I am using the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor extension and I have modified the dark theme a little bit so that it suits my needs.
However I am experiencing an issue with the background color when I am using the Find tool. The issue is that I am setting an exact color for the background of the highlighted string, but it seems that there is some default transparency applied which is not editable even when using the editor mentioned above (VS gives you the option to edit the colors while the custom editor gives you the option to change the opacity as well).
Since I am using the dark theme whichever color I choose it looks like dark grey with a little bit of red/blue/yellow/whatever. I need to set it to something vibrant and not to dark grey with a drop of white for example - I want to easily see what is highlighted when I search.
How do I set it to something vibrant and not to dark grey with a drop of white for example - I want to easily see what is highlighted when I search?

How to get uniform color on selected text in Visual Studio 2012?

I change the Selected Text color which only allows you to change the background color but when I select some text, I notice the color is definitely not uniform all across. The selected text's background color looks different for a keyword vs an identifier.
Here is how it looks:
Is there a way to fix this?
It seems that Visual Studio 2012 doesn't like non-default fonts. Probably a bug in VS2012. Press the use Default fonts to solve the problem, so far that's the only solution I know.

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