I have applied a color theme called Vibrant Ink (or some modification of it), and since I installed Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools all my statement completion boxes are unreadable.
undreadable http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/7876/undreadable.png.
What setting changes the colors of these boxes? Preferrably, I'd like to change the background color to something darker, but if that's not possible at least I want to change the text color.
Update: I changed the SignatureHelpTooltipBackground setting under Tools->Options...->Environment->Fonts and colors, but this doesn't seem to affect the tooltips when editing JavaScript.
Is there another setting for JS colors, or is this a bug in VS?
The "default" ToolTip style has hard-coded colors that will only be different if you are running in high-contrast mode. Otherwise, it will be the light gray gradient you see in the picture above.
The tooltips in the ProPack for VB/C# files use a custom (configurable) style as you noted above.
Please submit feedback that the default tooltip background color should be configurable. The more customer requests are heard for this issue, the higher the likelihood it will be fixed in a future release:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio
I'm not sure it is legal or not, we can always disassemble the code and modify (patch) what we want. In this case, find that gray color in assembly and change it. It shouldn't be hard for someone who knows .NET and hexes well.
Related
Ok. I am finding it difficult to visually discern where the current focus of my editor is. The image below shows that I am currently in the bottom PathIcon tag while the top PathIcon tag is highlighted because it is a matching type. The similarity in color has finally driven me crazy.
Does anyone know the correct text-type in the Fonts and Colors dialog of Visual Studio 2015 to change this color? And, look, for all the StackOverflow haters trolling the board, please resist closing this q until there is an answer. Then you can have your fun.
It looks like there are actually two different colors in play here. The grey box on the "<PathIcon" that contains the cursor is "Brace Matching (Rectangle)". The purplish box on the other "PathIcon" looks like it is the background portion of the "Match color", which is installed by the pro power tools.
The latter color won't reset if you change the color in fonts and colors but will be correct for editor instances you open after changing the color.
I think you're looking for Highlight Current Line (Active), which controls the colors of the line your cursor is on.
I import Spotfire graphics into Powerpoint quite frequently. Spotfire has its own specific color palette, which aren't the standard colors used in powerpoint, at least I don't think so.
I often must create my own legend or for other reasons match the spotfire color palette, and I do this by entering the RGB codes for the spotfire colors. I would like to do this one time and have the spotfire color palette always available in powerpoint without having to re-type.
I do not think I want to use a color theme, because I want my colors to stay consistent if I end up using different templates (themes). That is, I don't want to call spotfire default blue "Accent 1", because if I change background templates (themes) I think it will overwrite Accent 1 with the new template's Accent 1.
So I want a color palette that is always available to me regardless of what theme I choose.
Any thoughts?
You're dismissing themes for all the right reasons. They wouldn't work for what you're after. You'd pretty much need to buy or write an add-in to do what you want.
For example, it might install n buttons on the toolbar/ribbon, where n = the number of colors you need on your palette. When the button is clicked it sets the fill, for example, of the currently selected shape/shapes to the appropriate color.
You could have different sets of buttons for fill, outline etc, or have the code figure out whether the user has pressed, eg the CTRL key. Click = set the fill, CTRL+Click = set the outline.
Because I was curious I decided to attempt to create a simple Add-In that will allow you to select a chart, series in the chart, and then apply colors.
You can download from Google Docs (revised link)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1v0s8ldwHRYMFFPZ29FNmI0TkE/edit?usp=sharing
The file is saved as a PPTM to expose the code modules. Save As a PPAM and load the Add-in; it will be available from the Add-Ins command bar. I have tested briefly and seems to be working.
Here's the nuts & bolts of it:
First declared several custom colors as Public Const variables. These can be modified using the long value (converted from RGB) to suit whatever you need.
The macro requires that the selection be a Shape, and further that the Shape .HasChart = True. There is some logic to trap these conditions.
A user form has a ComboBox that populates with a list of Series from the selected chart, and 8 CommandButtons colored for each of the defined colors, will send that color to the chosen series.
You could add additional CommandButtons and colors as needed, or tweak the existing code to suit your specific needs.
Although the slide templates have a default color theme attached to them, you can switch slide templates and still use any XML color scheme at your disposal.
In VS2010, I have a customized text editor color scheme that has a black background and light grey text. This is great for me working by myself on an LCD display. However, often I need to plug in to a projector to display code to a group. The black background color scheme does not work well at all on a projector, so I always want to flip back to basically the "default" color scheme.
The only way I know of to do this right now is to export the VS color settings to a backup file, then revert to defaults. When I am done with my group presentation, I can then re-import the previously exported color settings.
Does anyone know of an easier / less manual way of doing this? Like a plugin that lets you flip between text editor color schemes, or simply a macro to do the manual process above?
I found this writeup on how to make a macro and menu items to quickly export/import the fonts and colors: http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2010/03/09/225.aspx
I'm using the ssOption control (Sheridan 3d Option control) in VB6.
In Windows 98 the text area background color is the same color as the background color around the Option Circle, and that color is the default form color. So the Option button appears to be transparent.
There is no Background color property and on Windows XP the background color of the text area is a different color from the background color around the Option circle.
Any ideas as to why this would happen? The control's wrapper is in Threed32.ocx and I have the same version of it in the Windows\system32 directory on both the Win98 and WinXP systems.
Why might it behave differently on 98 vs XP?
Any ideas on a fix?
SSOption sets it background to the Windows Button Face on Windows XP. This the same background you get when you make a new form. You will need to use a frame or another type of enclosure that has a background of button face if you want to use it on a multi-colored form. Otherwise use VB6's Option button.
The advantages of the SSOption is the ability to display it's text in a 3D raised or inset format. This really only works well using the default button face color which is why it is hard coded into the control. It also has better formatting of the text when the option button is to the right of the text.
If you can't use a enclosing frame or panel then you have a tedious alternative. You can make an VB6 option with no text. If you are using the 3D font. Then you can use two labels to achieve the same effect. Make the bottom white (or top depending on raised vs inset) and offset by one pixel or 15 twips.
You can use the ZoomIn tool if you installed VB6 as part of the Visual Studio 6 package to make sure it is right.
If you are using it for the Alignment. Then you can fiddle with the width of the VB6 native option control until it looks right or make the option with no text and use a label.
Threed32.ocx is ancient - it was designed for VB4. I would replace it with the built-in VB6 option control.
Alex is right. Threed32.ocx is old and has a number of problems. It's not supported on Vista, it grabs the focus when it's made visible, it's hard to upgrade to VB.NET - there are more. For my company these are strong enough to outweigh the extra functionality it gives - we're droppping it from all our programs.
For example, Windows Forms Designer offers to place my controls on the form the way there are 12 pixels between form border and control border. It seems too much to me. Is it standard value? Also, as I understand standard button height should be 23 pixels. Am I right? Is there any documents that state all this? And can I setup this default values in Visual Studio (for example what if want default margin between control and form borders, when the snap appears, to be 6 pixels instead of 12)?
You can always refer to the Windows User Experience Guidelines. It comes with a handy table of recommended control sizes. There are drawbacks in using pixel sizes, however.
I don't know of a way to control the snapping behaviour in Visual Studio, though. Apparently it can't be done. You can set a grid size, but it won't affect the dynamic snapping lines.
To change the snapping options, go to Tools > Options > Windows Forms Designer. There is a 'Layout Settings' category that include a setting called 'GridSize'.
As far as standards are concerned, I see them fading away with the arrival of technologies that focus on the user experience (WPF/Silverlight). Look at Expression Blend for instance. Not very standard, right? I think delivering a great user experience in each app is much more important than having a common GUI style across all apps.