NetBeans - The dark side
by admin on Nov.17, 2008, under NetBeans, PHP, PHP Editors
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This weekend I have been playing with NetBeans 6.5 RC2 look-and-feel. The mission was to make the editor look better on my monitor. Issues similar to this has also been addressed several times on codinghorror.com. I have a 22 inch TFT VGA monitor from Acer. They call it P223w and it is crap. Actually it is good for a lot of things, but working with highlighted text is not one of them. I have tried pretty much everything including:
- cleartype tuning (I am on Vista)
- monitor settings
- trying different monospaced cleartype and bitmap fonts
- upgrading JRE
- trying NetBeans on Linux (ubuntu)
Nothing seemed to work, but I noticed that changing the editing area background to a dark grey did make the fonts look a lot better. I normally prefer to have a white background, but I was willing to change that. Now, if only I could make the rest of the NetBeans interface dark… This wasn’t possible in NetBeans itself, so I started to look for a solution. After a little searching I came across NimROD look and feel. After some tweaking off a NimROD theme and changing of few of NimROD’s icons, I came to fairly decent result. You can see the result on this screen shot. It is not perfect, but it is ok. You can download my theme and my version of the jar-file here.
How to
NimROD is easy to use with NetBeans. Just download a .jar file and theme modify the target of your NetBeans shortcut like so:
"C:\Programmer\Webudvikling\NetBeans\NetBeans 6.5 RC2\bin\netbeans.exe" -J-Dnimrodlf.themeFile=DarkGrey.theme -cp:p C:\nimrod\nimrodlf.jar --laf com.nilo.plaf.nimrod.NimRODLookAndFeel
Shortcut target
I have put the jar-file and theme file in the NetBeans bin folder, but I guess you can put it anywhere you like. Just modify the NetBeans shotcut to reflect your setup. Please notice that your shortcut will most likely be different from mine.
The NimROD theme controls the colors of the Java Metal theme. If you want to modify the theme, then go to the folder where you put the jar file and run it:
java -jar nimrodlf.jar
NimROD’s theme editor allows you to load the theme file, edit the colors, and preview the changes to see the effect they have on the various interface elements. The beauty of the solution is that it doesn’t make any changes to NetBeans. If you don’t like it, you simply change the shortcut target back to the original.
If you want different icons or make other changes to NimROD’s behavior, then go here to get the source and further info.
December 18th, 2008 on 09:25
thanks, i plan to try this out at work tomorrow!
July 11th, 2009 on 22:38
Hi!
I’ve tried you look and feel. I have a question: do you know how to make such look and feel? Do you know any website with them?
July 11th, 2009 on 22:39
Sorry! I’ve just read the end of the article! Thanks!
September 26th, 2009 on 09:39
Thx I’ve put the theme for netbeans
Where can I have the theme for the code editor ?
I search a dark one, more readable than white !
Thx by advance
September 26th, 2009 on 09:53
Glad to hear you could use the “theme” for Netbeans. I have actually stopped using the theme myself, af I got a better screen, so I am no longer using dark colors. If I had still used it I could have exported my fonts and colors. The best thing you can do is to set the colors up yourself in Tools->Options->Fonts and Colors.
September 26th, 2009 on 10:09
I think dark colours are better for eyes !
It’s a little bit long to do it
I’m a php/css/javascript/html developper and I’ve found :
http://net.tutsplus.com/freebies/themes/netbeans-twilight-theme/
If you have more themes, I will be happy to try it
Thx for your quick answer
November 25th, 2009 on 17:12
I recently found and used this article to theme my Netbeans.
The one problem I have with this theme is that SQL Query Results (the bottom pane) is not affected by this theme. Nor is editing XML in “design” view.
Do you know how or know a place to bring those elements in line with Nimrod and your dark theme?
Thanks!
June 3rd, 2010 on 07:23
[...] on the hunt for the elusive dark colour look-and-feel for NetBeans. I found this site that has great information about the NimROD L&F. This sets the widgets to a dark colour (or you could customise your own colours with [...]