Aptana Studio IDE Dark Color Theme

October 30th, 2009

Aptana Studio is currently my IDE of choice. It’s fast, flexible and built on Eclipse. Using it day in and day out, I’ve decided to create a custom, light on dark color theme.

Supported Aptana Editors

Custom color themes have been created for all of the current Aptana Studio editors, including:

  • CSS
  • HTML
  • Javascript
  • jSON
  • PHP
  • PHP Doc
  • PHP Smarty
  • PHP Smarty Config
  • ScriptDoc
  • XML

Sample Screens

Recommended Font

I’ve been using the Anonymous Pro font, which is available as a free download. Click here for more info.

Installation Instructions

Rather than retype everything, if you need assistance in installing Aptana color themes, there is a great tutorial online written by John Rockefeller. Click here to read it.

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17 Responses to Aptana Studio IDE Dark Color Theme

  1. Joakim
    November 3rd, 2009 at 5:42 am

    Looks nice! I’ve just switched to it. The only problem I find with it is when I put my cursor on a variable and it is highlighted. I think the highlighted text should change to a darker color to contrast the new text background. I’ve got an example:

    First pic: Dark theme with no highlight
    http://bayimg.com/image/jaeblaacl.jpg
    Second pic: Dark theme with highlight
    http://bayimg.com/image/jaebmaacl.jpg
    Third pic: Default theme with highlight
    http://bayimg.com/image/jaeboaacl.jpg

  2. NightLion
    November 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    I think I know what you’re talking about. This is a tough one because Aptana 1.5′s colors behave differently on a MAC and PC. I reported a bug to Aptana where the mac version wouldn’t even let certain colors be applied to items like highlighting and block selecting. In any event, I might release two separate versions, one for Mac and one for PC. Keep you posted.

  3. Michael
    November 3rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    Thanks for the great theme!

    Any news on porting this to Aptana 2.0?

  4. NightLion
    November 3rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    I’ve actually been working with Aptana 1.5 because I really don’t like PDT. Once of the things I need to figure out is how to properly import/export eclipse color schemes. I will keep you posted.

  5. Jacob
    November 4th, 2009 at 4:44 am

    I’ll keep an eye on this page, looking forward to when/if you release a theme for 2.0!

  6. November 15th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Thank you so much for putting this together. I’ve been at it all week and felt like my eyes were going to drop out of my head and roll away. Your color scheme and font suggestion saved my life and my marriage. Thank you Thank you.

    It’s a shame that there is no way to skin the whole app. The edit area is now an island of goodness in a sea of ugly.

    PS. I’m sticking with 1.5 too. tried to debug PHP with 2.0 and just could not get it to work. What a shame Aptana is moving in a bad direction.

  7. NightLion
    November 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    FYI, Aptana 2.02 now supports the old PHP 1.1 module. I recently post about it in the Web section, along with directions on how to set it up.

  8. January 18th, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    GREAT!!! Thanks!

  9. Frederick
    January 26th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    I would love a fix for PC users, since variable highlighting makes this unusable for me.

  10. March 14th, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    I’m having problem with html and javascript syntax highlighting with files that are saved as .php. It’s kind of like a php template.

  11. Bruce
    March 31st, 2010 at 10:00 am

    @Frederick,

    I figured this out today for Aptana 2.0.3, so if you haven’t fixed it yet here is the solution:
    - Goto Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors > Annotations

    The two fields for variable highlighting to change is “Write Occurrences” and “Read Occurrences”. I changed the values to #4D4D4D, however you can change it to a color that suits you best.

    Hope that helps. :)

  12. Daren
    April 1st, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    These themes are great! Do you know of one that has been created for Ruby?

  13. April 14th, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    [...] Theme: http://www.nightlion.net/themes/2009/aptana-dark-color-theme/ [...]

  14. Kim
    April 16th, 2010 at 2:17 am

    wow! thank you so much.
    i have been looking for this…..^^

  15. April 21st, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    Problem with all dark themes on Eclipse so far:

    onclick=”switchForm_{ELEMENT_NAME}();return false;”

    i.e. any text inside quotes will stay black.. which sucks for dark themes. Eclipse doesn’t seem to allow one to change the basic default colour for text inside edit windows.

  16. June 26th, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    Hey, thanks a lot for the color theme!

  17. August 9th, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    Hi,
    I got the .col files. My only question is how do I apply it to the php editor? I don’t see an import button. I’m using Aptana 3.0b.

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