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.
17 Responses to Aptana Studio IDE Dark Color Theme
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
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.
Thanks for the great theme!
Any news on porting this to Aptana 2.0?
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.
I’ll keep an eye on this page, looking forward to when/if you release a theme for 2.0!
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.
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.
GREAT!!! Thanks!
I would love a fix for PC users, since variable highlighting makes this unusable for me.
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.
@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.
These themes are great! Do you know of one that has been created for Ruby?
[...] Theme: http://www.nightlion.net/themes/2009/aptana-dark-color-theme/ [...]
wow! thank you so much.
i have been looking for this…..^^
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.
Hey, thanks a lot for the color theme!
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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