I recently migrated from visual studio code to visual studio (because vsc and unity wouldn't be friends), and my only gripe is minor, yet a major annoyance: Despite all other text looking fine and crisp, collapsed region headers are so blurry they border on unreadable on my small screen (See image).
I can't find any applicable settings or previous threads. I'm working from a mac, have yet to add any extensions, and use only default settings (except for dark mode ofc). Any ideas for causes or solutions would be greatly appreciated :)
Edit:
Am I just looking in the wrong place for my settings? Is Apple hiding stuff from me again?:
Related
I'm trying to make VS Code editor to look exactly like Visual Studio. I made sure the font settings are exactly the same, however text still renders differently in VS Code (it seems "lighter").
Is there any way to fix this issue?
In the image below the top text is copied from Visual Studio while the bottom one is copied from VS code.
I know the difference is subtle but is still pretty noticeable.
Font rendering in VSCode has been a reoccurring issue throughout a good portion of the editors life time. Font rendering, especially in portable GUI's, is affected by several different layers, for example:
Your Graphics Card can affect the way font is rendered (you can try adjusting the graphic cards settings manually).
Your Monitor, obviously, affects rendering. In fact your monitor has a huge impact. (Try playing with your Monitor's Settings)
The color settings that are offered by your OS may have an impact (often times the color settings are the same as the graphic card settings though. Which means you can just use your OS's GUI to adjust your cards settings in some cases (Not on Ubuntu though))_
Somethings are out of your control, like:
VSCode, it is written using Electron v6. Not only does Electron impact font rendering, but when VSCode switched it Version 6 a lot of people reported a decrease in the editors font rendering quality.
VSCode also implements Anti-Aliasing tools, but as far as I can tell, they auto configure, so you have no control over this. These tools are likely to be one of the biggest causes to the difference in rendering you see, between VS IDE & VS CODE. There is a tool however that may give you some control over the Visual Studio side of rendering that I share a link to below. And just as an FYI, the Anti-Aliasing that VSCode uses is called Sub-pixel Rendering, which is something that Visual Studio doesn't implement as far as I can tell.
The Area You Have the Most Control in:
There is ONE tool/thing that you have 100% control over, that also greatly affects font-rendering, and that is the font that you decide to use. When choosing a font, you have the choice of equipping an OTF, or a TTF. In my personal experience, OTF's render better 90% of the time. The difference is in how they are created.
TTF fonts are made using quadratic Beziers.
OTF fonts are made using cubic Beziers.
Links above are the same
Fonts use something called font-hinting
Font hinting. Essentially font-hinting is a list of instructions that dynamically changes the way a font is rendered, by using the rasterized grid background as a parameter. adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. Choosing a quality font equipped with good hinting is critical for non-blurry readable text.
Many people choose font because like the way they look, or the italic version of the font they use is popular. When choosing a font, it is extremely important to choose, not the coolest one, but the one that renders with the highest quality, and is the easiest for you to read.
Well Rendering Fonts:
Not only are their fonts that render well, with ligature support, but the best rendering fonts are always free IMO. Bellow are Fonts that use font hinting and have top notch rendering abilities.
JetBrains Mono (JetBrain's Font & My Personal Favorite)
Cascadia Code (Microsoft's Programming Font from 2019)
Fira Code (Not that old, but not that new either. Is loved by many.)
Fira Mono (No Ligatures, Different Font than Fira Code)
Consolas (A classic)
Menlo (Another Classic)
The top 4 are at the top of the list because they receive updates ever few months. I don't think Menlo & Consolas receive regular updates, but they aren't left forgotten either, the are updated every year or two.
To finish with as solid of an answer as I can provide:
_"Getting VSCode to render like the Visual Studio IDE, is not something that you will probably get, with 100% satisfaction, getting an exact match with all of the different factors is just an extremely and possibly impossible thing to due. You can probably make the way the two pieces of software render, more a like, not in functionality, but in looks. It would probably help a great deal to make sure that everything that affects rendering is up to date, editor, IDE, fonts, tools, ect... From their you can try different versions, and see if maybe an older version of VSCode rendered in a way that is preferable to you. You should also play with your monitors settings. I have found that I can accomplish a great deal just through the buttons under the face of my monitor. Check Visual Studio for any rendering settings it might have, VSCode doesn't have much available, but maybe Visual Studio IDE does (I haven't used the IDE in 5 years so IDK if it does).
On a final note:
Their is one tool that could help you, I haven't used it, because it isn't for VSCode, it's for Visual Studio, but it might give you more control than you have now. The tool is called..."_
Text Sharp (Click Here to see it in the VS Market Place)
The icon for Visual Studio on my Windows 7 taskbar is animated with a green bar moving left to right. What does it mean, and how can I stop it?
http://i.imgur.com/v1AEcue.jpg?1
I've not got any extensions installed, but I do have resharper (version 7 until I can afford to upgrade). I can't find anything relevant through google, and I can't see an option in the options panels.
The animation is used to represent progress. It's the same as for file copies (for example). I've seen ReSharper do this while running unit tests. Perhaps that, or maybe another extension?
I know this is an old post, but I am still experiencing the issue where the animation persists even though the tests have long finished (with VS2015 and Resharper 2016.1.2).
One way to get around this problem is to disable taskbar animations altogether:
Today, I installed Visual Studio 2010 Professional on a new laptop with a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit install. I, being quite used to the look of Visual Studio 2010, instantly spotted that something was wrong. It seems that the Visual Studio application is "zoomed in", in a way. The text is much larger (even though it says that the zoom level is 100%, and the text size is 10, which is the same as what I used before), and generally, so are the other windows like the Solution Explorer and Output console. The quality of the icons and images is also very bad.
Here are two comparison images (I wasn't allowed to post images, so some links will have to do):
This is the look that I'm used to. I see plenty of text in the windows, and the icons are fine.
http://i51.tinypic.com/2mq8dau.png
This is what greeted me when I installed VS2010 on my new laptop. The icons look stretched, and I can fit a lot less code in the window.
http://i56.tinypic.com/35k0fo4.png
The screen resolution on my old computer is 1920x1200 and the resolution on my new computer is 1920x1080. (I resized the VS window on my old computer to about 1920x1080 to show the difference).
It looks like my image host resized the images as well, but you should still be able to see the difference.
Has anyone had the same problem? I'm hoping it's just some visual settings. If anything is missing, I will be happy to provide more information.
Thanks in advance.
It seems your Font Size DPI is at 150% on the second screenshot. If you right click on the Desktop and select Personalize > Adjust Font Size (DPI)* you should be able to see what it is currently set at.
Check
that your screen is at native resolution (there can only be one, the native max)
that your OS font is
at normal size
antialiasing (i believe windows calls that cleartype or something)
the screen density is 'standard' (usually 96DPI IIRC)
I strongly suspect the latter (the DPI setting). It's under
Desktop Properies
Display Properties
Display Settings
Advanced
DPI Settings
in my Windows
If you hold down Ctrl and roll the wheel on the mouse it will zoom it in and out. You can then get the desired size that you want. I hope that solves it.
EDIT:
Also if you go to Tools->Options and then under Environment->Font and Colors you can then customize the font size for the whole application.
I didn't find any setting that could case this effect.
Did you try reseting the settings of visual studio (Tools - Import and Export Settings) or Import the settings of your working maschine.
Maybe you have configured big-icons / big-font in windows?
I just got VS 2010 beta 1, but the text in the text editor is thin, ie not anti aliased, smoothed or cleartyped. It's hard to read. Is there a setting to adjust it, similar to the one in the OS.
This is a known issue with the beta. See the readme. Section 2.4.2.2 "Text may appear slighly blurry".
They are working on a fix and recommend you stick with Consolas font for English, for now.
This will be fixed in Beta 2 once WPF integrates with the DirectWrite code in the latest versions of DirectX.
To workaround this, we decided to override the OS Setting and always for ClearType smoothing to be on when Consolas is the editor font. This way the user who isn't particular about fonts gets the best behaviour and if the user wants to have a non-clear type experience the will also need to switch their font which they would have to do anyways.
ClearType cannot be disabled in source code windows
Let me know if changing the font from Consolas works for you.
The Microsoft H4X0RS decided to force users to adopt ClearType when using Consolas font (scroll down until you see the heading Consolas always uses ClearType)
The way to fix this is to install the Text Sharp extension (yes, you read right, you need to install an extension to turn off BlurType -- ie to have your system-wide setting of no anti-aliasing applied)
How the people who did this got away with it I'll never know.
There is an extension that can help with this:
http://www.svprogramming.net/text-sharp/index.html
You have to both turn it off in the display options and the performance options:
Visual Studio 2010 Text Clarity: ClearType Options
Like many SO people, I'm in front of a computer almost all day. I like having a dark theme for Visual Studio (easier on the eyes), but since the rest of Windows and apps (explorer, dialogs, Outlook), have the full white background, it's even harder to switch between nice dark VS and sunshine bright Windows.
I tried a UXTheme.dll patch but couldn't find any dark themes that worked across Visual Studio and Windows apps in general. Any suggestions?
Edit: To be clear, I'd like no or almost no white. No scrollbars, menus, etc.
I don't think you're going to find a Windows theme that can accomplish your task. Many software applications do not adhere to colors specified in Windows preferences and are not at all customizable--Notepad, for example, is black text on a white background, end of story.
For themes in general, Microsoft has released two official XP themes within the last year that may be worth looking at:
Zune
Embedded
If you are planning on using a modified uxtheme.dll file, you can check out Luna Element Black, which is one I have used for well over a year now.
If you are this passionate about not having white areas visible in some of the programs you use, perhaps you need to find new applications that provide similar features but also offer customization in terms of fonts and colors--for example, using Notepad++ instead of Notepad, which gives you an almost exhaustive amount of customization possibilities.
May be not exactly what you are looking for, but this is a dark color scheme for visual Studio (2005 or 2008) you may use in complement of UXTheme.
Off course, they are other dar color schemes for Visual studio, like this one (Jeff has one also).
But I am not sure there is one tool that applies to all windows, including Visual Studio.