Fonts and Colors, Environment, Options Dialog Box

  • Article

The Fonts and Colors page of the Options dialog box allows you to establish a custom font and color scheme for various user interface elements in the integrated development environment (IDE). You can access this dialog box by selecting Options from the Tools menu and choosing the Fonts and Colors page from the Environment folder.

Color scheme changes do not take effect during the session in which you make them. You can evaluate color changes by opening another instance of Visual Studio and producing the conditions under which you expect your changes to apply.

  • Show settings for
    Lists all of the user interface elements for which you can change font and color schemes. After selecting an item from this list you can customize color settings for the item selected in Display items.

    • Text Editor
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for Text Editor affect the appearance of text in your default text editor. Documents opened in a text editor outside the IDE will not be affected by these settings. For information about changing your default text editor, see Changing or Adding a Default Editor.

    • Printer
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for Printer affect the appearance of text in printed documents.

      Tip   As needed, you can select a different default font for printing than that used for display in the text editor. This can be useful when printing code that contains both single-byte and double-byte characters.

    • Dialogs and Tool Windows
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for this item affect the appearance of text in all parts of all dialog boxes and tool windows in the IDE.

      Note   Changes to the text of Dialogs and Tool Windows items do not take effect during the session in which you make them. You can evaluate such changes by opening another instance of Visual Studio .

    • Analyzer
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for this item affect the appearance of text in windows for Visual Studio Analyzer.

    • Database and Table Designers
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for this item affect the appearance of text in database schema and any other documents you create with the Database Designer.

    • Query and View Designers
      Changes to font style, size, and color display settings for this item affect the appearance of text in the Query or View Designers.

  • Use Defaults/Use
    The Use Defaults button resets the selected Show settings for the list item's default font and color values. The Use button appears when other display schemes are available for selection. For example, you can choose from two schemes for the Printer.

  • Font (fixed width fonts are bolded in dropdown)
    Lists all the fonts installed on your system. When the drop-down menu first appears, the current font for the element selected in the Show settings for field is highlighted. Fixed fonts — which are easier to align in the editor — appear in bold.

  • Size
    Lists available point sizes for the highlighted font. Changing the size of the font affects all Display items for the Show settings for selection.

  • Display items
    Lists the items for which you can modify the foreground and background color.

    Note   Text is the default display item. As such, properties assigned to Text will be overridden by properties assigned to other display items. For example, if you assign the color blue to Text and the color green to Identifier, all identifiers will appear in green. In this example, Identifier properties override Text properties.

  • Item foreground
    Lists the available colors you can choose for the foreground of the item selected in Display items. Because some items are related, and should therefore maintain a consistent display scheme, changing the foreground color of text also changes the defaults for elements such as Compiler Error, Keyword, or Operator.

  • Custom
    Displays the Color picker dialog box to allow you to set a custom color for the item selected in the Display items list.

    Note   Your ability to define custom colors may be limited by the color settings for your computer display. For example, if your computer is set to display 256 colors and you select a custom color from the Color dialog box, the IDE defaults to the closest available Basic color and displays the color black in the Color preview box.

  • Item background
    Provides a color palette from which you can choose a background color for the item selected in Display items. Because some items are related, and should therefore maintain a consistent display scheme, changing the foreground color of text also changes the defaults for elements such as Compiler Error, Keyword, or Operator.

  • Custom
    Displays the Color picker dialog box to allow you to set a custom color for the item selected in the Display items list.

  • Bold
    Select this option to display the text of selected Display items in bold text. Bold text is easier to identify in the editor.

  • Sample
    Displays a sample of the font style, size, and color scheme for the Show settings for and Display items selected. You can use this box to preview the results as you experiment with different formatting options.

See Also

Environment, Options Dialog Box | Options Dialog Box | Changing or Adding a Default Editor