Worked like a charm. Is there a way to make the dreamweaver interface a darker theme?

I've had a look around before and didn't find a way to skin the actual interface components. That would be pretty cool.

Didn't work for me

Ignore me I forgot part 5 - now looks fine. I can get used to this.

Glad you like it.

That's so much nicer.

Worked great on a Mac 10.5 w/ CS4, but here are some specifics for those peeps to keep in mind. On the Mac there are 2 places that have the colors.xml. One is for global use and one is for the user. Go to:

%machineName%\Users\%username%\Library\Application Support\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration\CodeColoring\Colors.xml

Do everything else as listed above. I did have to restart my machine to get it to work though.

Thanks for the Color Scheme. Saved me loads of time!

No sir, thank you! I've updated the article at the end with a link to your comment about CS4 on Mac.

Hey, just stumbled on this post from Google. Love the colour scheme, much easier on the eyes :).

I'm on a Mac and didn't require a reboot by the way.

i've been using black screen since it was really black (or blue). i always take my time and change defaults of every editor i used before.
but i like your pastel colors very much.
guy, you made me changed my own scheme to yours. i give you that...

Love it! just what I was looking for. THANKS!

Thank you for this, I was editing my file and saw I had to do the PHP coloring by hand and gave up. It is so much easier for me to read now.

guyz, i forget to write but correct file location for Vista sould be like following:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration\CodeColoring

have a nice day

I made my dark code colorization for Dreamweaver. You can download it here http://www.sramekdesign.com/dreamweaver/dark-coding-colorization-for-dreamweaver/

works for me on dreamweaver 8, however do you know how to tweak the color of the highlight selection ? currently its on gray.

Can I change font in code view ?

Yes you can. Preferences -> Fonts -> Code View

Choosing something suitable can be tricky.

Mikey, have You ever used Zend Studio Eclipse ?
I love that app, but font there is even more ugly than one in Dreamweaver, and I can't seem to find a way how to fix it.. Do you ? :D :D

I've used it and I reckon it's the best of the free web dev apps out there. From memory I know you can change the theme but I'm not sure about the fonts.

I started an article a little while back on alternative code fonts and might even publish it soon.

Another great article from you! (found via your latest blog post on Dreamweaver code-view fonts). Thanks as always for sharing these useful tidbits and tools, they're much appreciated.

Btw the site design and usability on this site is just lovely, and the code captcha makes me smile :)

Harmony

www.harmonysteel.com
www.alarinmusic.com

Thanks a bunch for the kind words Harmony. I think you and I will get along famously :-)

Thanks a bunch man, saved me an hour of trail/error : ) and for your captcha, what if i didnt know who elvis was? I was born in 84! You need a picture of tupac or ex president bush

Tested for CS4 on a PC (XP) - it *works* in the sense that new colors are applied but they are not the same as what is shown in the screen shot in the post. Most everything is a different shade of blue. The path is different also:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\configuration\CodeColoring
Didn't require a reboot.
Maybe this is the global and I need to change user settings too? Haven't had time to play around with it yet but definitely better than the default, with some tweaking. Thanks :)

Thanks Anna. If you get it sorted be sure to post your results here. Enquiring minds want to know :-)

I had an issue with WinXP Dreamweaver CS4 that required me to delete the applications cache file but other than that works great.

Thanks!

for dreamweaver cs4 and windows 7:

this post from dreamweaver help file:
"From David Powers (moderator):
Mark, the colours are saved in a file called Colors.xml in the CodeColoring subfolder of each user's personal configuration folder. (...) For Dreamweaver CS4, it’s as follows:

Windows 7: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver
CS4\\Configuration\CodeColoring

A very crude way of reverting to the standard colours is to delete your personal configuration folder. Dreamweaver then automatically creates a new one with all the default settings when the program is next launched. However, this deletes any other preferences you might have set. A less destructive approach is to rename your personal configuration folder temporarily, and relaunch Dreamweaver. You can then copy the new version of Colors.xml to your renamed configuration folder, delete the newly created one, and change the name of your backup to Configuration."

I deleted all the files in the CodeColoring folder and pasted the colors.xml from this site. Restarted Dreamweaver, and voilá...

I could not use this for my Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 :) do you have any fixes for this?

None that I'm aware of sorry. Maybe someone else has an idea?

I have DW8, and it worked just fine. You have to overwrite (make a backup though) the file in this directory: " C:\Documents and Settings\%UserName%\Application Data\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 8\Configuration\CodeColoring\Colors.xml"

good luck

thanks it was awsome!! :)

How about ASP VBScript?
any support for that?

Sorry Franky, I never took it that far as I don't venture into that territory.

Wow...what a difference. I immediately noticed my eyes relax. I bet this will help with eye strain. Thank you!

Anytime!

thank you bro!

I tried it on Dreamweaver CS4 in WinXP, but I had to place the 'Colors.xml' in two places for it to work for me:

1. C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration\CodeColoring\

and

2. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\configuration\CodeColoring\

--

Also, as an FYI, the color scheme from http://www.sramekdesign.com/dreamweaver/dark-coding-colorization-for-dreamweaver/ and this one here are exactly the same. Both files weigh "14.3 KB (14,680 bytes)".

I also decided to use a darker background: #191919.

--

There should be an Extension for Color Coding Themes for Dreamweaver.

Thanks a lot for the info Mr. WebGuy, extremely helpful.

DW8 + your theme + DIV tags= nearly invisible!

Do you know what DW8 refers to DIV tags as please? They come out as a dark blue, which nearly matches the hues of the dark backgrounds making them hard to see.

I can't seem to find DIV tags in the colour preferences, and it's driving me bonkers..

Thanks for the theme though, now DW looks nearly as good as Komodo Edit 5!

very nice thanks! darker is better :)

Thanks for your comment Diogo. I'd been screwing around trying to get this work right on Vista 64 and though I follow the instructions above, could not get it right.

I then tried what you suggested, deleted everything in code color folder (under user appdata) and pasted colors.xml and BAM! Kicked it up a notch.

IkeaTheSofa

I'm also using it at home and at work now,
It's just awsome!

I have to say, i've used this twice now (once pre-7 now on 7 with CS3) and I have to say this is an extremely good theme. I normally don't post comments on stuff but props to you, it's awesome!

Note, I did make one change for text files, currently the background and font are really close to the same, I just changed the font color to be: #0099FF

Thanks for the compliment and I'm glad you liked it. Light blue for the font hey?

Great job! I like how it seems and it's better for my eyes, the #FFF color in the background sometimes makes me get tired

Cool. If I could suggest combining this theme with Droid Sans or one of these other fonts and you're all set. Droid Sans is an awesome code font: http://www.thatwebguyblog.com/post/5_good_programming_fonts

Спасибо за тёмные цвета, а то самаому как-то впадло их было подбирать!

Thank you! This is a very nice theme. I get very tired of looking at white with sharp colors. This theme is quite relaxing. Thank you!

Bad color don't install.Default very beatiful

Thanks a lot, i did get some Javascript errors at some point. Removed it and reinstalled it. I'll let u know if it pops up again. It works perfectly on my pc at home (Win7)

Awesomeness. That's the same platform I use with Dreamweaver CS3. Not sure why you got JS errors though. At least it's working now.

I am using Dreamweaver CS4, and it appears to be working! I have tested it with PHP, CSS, and HTML pages.

Hi! Kudos on the great work!
Have you ever think about porting Monokai to Dreamweaver? That would be AWESOME!

Hi, this is pretty much a life saver. Or at least an eye saver. Great work and thanks!

Just wanted to pass on my thanks for serving this up here - it is, as Jeff above me said, a life / eye saver. Your colours are much more complimentary to the hit-and-miss theme I'd created for myself :P

Thanks Laneth - glad you liked the theme.

thanks much for posting... worked like a charm. much easier on the eyes and i didn't have to spend an hour doing it. (only about 2.5 minutes)

shared it on twitter for your efforts... payin it forward.

=)

cheers,
//dave

Thanks Dave. You da man.

Hey I've been using this for quite awhile with CS3 and just recently upgraded to CS4... The proper path for CS4 on Vista is as follows:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver CS4\en_US\Configuration\CodeColoring

Thanks for the great color scheme!

everything go in right way in cs4. tnx dude ;)

@diogo

Thanks for the Windows 7 tips. I did your suggestions and it worked! Windows 7 64bit - I moved all the current color.xml files like asp xml to a backup folder and placed the new color file in there on its own!!

works great!!

Nice, just what I was looking for, works perfect with CS3.
Thanks!! :)

Awesome 2 the m@x. I'm glad so many people are finding this useful.

Thanks for this. I have also explored this option: http://www.sramekdesign.com/dreamweaver/dark-coding-colorization-for-dreamweaver/ In both however the colors are quite vibrant and crayola rather than rich and a bit more subdued as are the ones I've seen by great designers for Coda and especially Espresso.

My biggest dislike is also with the default font. With all my other editors I can change the font, is this not possible with DW? Also with my other editors that use CSS to style the colors, I can set the background to be transparent, is that not possible with DW? If not are either of those options possible with DW5?

Hi Christopher.

You can change the font in Dreamweaver: http://www.thatwebguyblog.com/post/5_good_programming_fonts

I'm pretty certain there is no transparency support though. I wouldn't use it anyway - I like my code to be totally legible while I'm working on it.

very cool, thx!

Hey, hope you don't mind but I needed to use manually create the theme in my editor so i ripped the color codes from the image. You can find it here http://i42.tinypic.com/14lotu1.jpg

This should save others some time and effort if they need to get the exact colors.

SWEEEEET!!!! Wondering though if you have a download for the original/default “Colors.xml”???…..seeing as how I started changing colors all willy-nilly before I found your site and before I realized there wasn’t a “Restore Default” button to click in Dreamweaver.

Here you go - the original colors xml file just for you: http://www.thatwebguyblog.com/media/file/colors.zip

Yaaaaay!!! Thank you so much! Really appreciate it! Now my inner control-freak/OCD can be subdued.

Thanks dude. I have always preferred a darker bg while coding but they make it so hard to do it all at once (seems they'd have some built in schemes you know? C++ Builder did and that was 15 years ago!).

Much love!

Works on Dreamweaver CS5 on my Mac too. Cheers.

Love the colors you set up, and use it on all my computers. One thing i had to do manually though was change the default code background color, but no big deal to do that.

Thanks!

Thanks for the color scheme. Looks great. Using it on a MacBook Pro with DW CS5. I did have to close and open DW a couple of times to make the changes take effect. Wish there was a place where you could download a bunch of great color schemes. Thanks again, not only for the color scheme but the great instructions and explaining how it works.

Awesomeness - good to see this theme is getting plenty of use. Feel free to spread the love.

Think nothing of it.

Unfortunately, I find that with your replacement Colors.xml file I lose the ability to change any but the background color in the Dreamweaver CS4 preferences. I opened the file with BBEdit, but the item names don't always correspond to the names in the Code Color preferences. I guess I'll have to spend some time experimenting - unless you have a list of equivalent names I could use. Anyway, thanks to turning me on to using an alternate background color. By the way, when I type in the background color value you recommend, I get an error message saying it's not a valid hex value. So I chose the nearest dark gray in the color chart. By the way, I'm working on a Mac, if that makes any difference.

Sorry it didn't work out for you. You're the first in this comment thread to report any problems. I only used CS3 on Windows but some brave adventurers tried it on CS4 and the Mac and all report these instructions work for that as well. The best I can offer is the default colours.xml file back if you didn't already keep a copy.

http://www.thatwebguyblog.com/media/file/colors.zip

Love it, this is almost the exact same color scheme I use with Textmate. But sometimes I still like to use Dreamweaver for html/css work so this should help keep things consistent.

Great!! I've looking for this for a while..
Thanks!

Охуенно! =awesome! Thanks a lot

Hey thanks this the right way for CS4 for Windows 7

THANK YOU! I've always spent about 30min configuring colors each time i use DW on a new machine but this cuts that out! So much faster and is working beautifully on Win7-CS5.

i've been using your colors for a while now and it's been making my job a whole lot easier. the scheme i was using before this one, was made by me and must admit yours just looks more.. right. all this being said, i wanna thank you and well.. looking forward to checking your DW CS5: HTML5/CSS3 scheme (if, of course, there will be one). peace

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/html5pack/

Thank You for your effort to make this avail, looks great and easy on the eyes, keep up the great work