What makes colors wonderful to the human eye is their ability to stimulate and relax the mind. This article will explore two tools that are used in web development to enhance the color effect. The two tools are CodeLobster IDE that provides color scheme customization and individual visual styles for the program. When you are done reading this article, you will learn how you can set up the user interface of your IDE.
Color schemes in the CodeLobster IDE
Color schemes usually provide an easy visual perception of code. As a PHP developer, you can instantly differentiate reserved words and expressions, variables, function and class name, from choosing the perfect color scheme for yourself. Another thing is the ability to identify and highlight code blocks, parentheses, quotes, opening, and closing tags. If you choose to use IDE, it will help you work conveniently with HTML and XML files. It will also help you with nested loops and strings in PHP and JavaScript. This is done by highlighting all the key elements of the code, in regards to the settings of the current color scheme.
Open the main menu to go to the settings; “Tools” -> “Preferences” and in the dialog box go to the section “Editor” -> “Colors”.
Color schemes
There is the “Color scheme” drop-down list that allows you to choose a color scheme that you like.
Here, you can change most of the color settings can be changed and here are a few settings for that purpose:
Show settings for – This is a drop-down list used to select the category for changing the highlighting colors. This includes general settings of the editor or specific for different programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, or CSS.
Display items – this is for setting customizable items, like keywords, parentheses and quotation marks, search results and matches, a code with errors, and so on.
To change the font color and background of the specified element, you can use the color picker tool located on the right side of the dialog box. You can also change the formatting and you also get options to make text bold, italic or with an underscore. When you are done making necessary changes, the modified theme is saved using a new name. This is done using the “Save As…” button.
CodeLobster has 28 wonderful color schemes which include saturated and colorful schemes ported from popular editors like Atom, Brackets, Notepad++, PSPad, and Sublime.
Visual styles in the CodeLobster IDE
Responsible for drawing the user interface is Visual styles. This is done in the scope of this program. It deals with the menu, graphic elements, and widgets, tabs, buttons, checkboxes, lists, and combo boxes. Each visual style comes with a full set of icons that harmoniously match this style and also provides a unique appearance for the entire application. You have the freedom to change the settings and also pick any combination of visual styles and color schemes. However, each style has its color scheme attached to the editor.
CodeLobster has several preinstalled styles and 8 themes for the program:
Ported from the popular Atom editor, we have the “AtomOneDark” and “AtomOneLight” which are dark and light themes, “Codelobster Dark” and “Codelobster Light” – native styles for IDE.
We also have a pair of modern themes designed using Material design style. These are “Modern Dark” and “Modern Light” – a pair “Storm” and “Sublime” are two dark styles, ported from the editors of the same names.
Go to the main menu to select a style, “View” -> “Visual Style”.
Visual Style-View
You can immediately experience if this style suits you since changes are applied instantly.
Editing Visual Styles in the CodeLobster IDE
CSS can change any UI element. This feature is provided by the new technologies for creating CodeLobster, in particular, the Qt system. Anyone can configure the user interface including IDE users and program developers.
Go to the main menu if you want to set up visual styles, “Tools” -> “Preferences” and in the “IDE” section open the item “Visual styles”.
Select the desired style from the list, and duplicate it. To give the individual style a new name, click the “Edit” button. All resources will be copied to the directory “user styles” installing the style by the default.
C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\CodelobsterIDE\userstyles\NewCodelobsterLight
This directory has the following structure:
Icons – this is the icon folder
Img – here are additional images
Style.qss – this has styles for widgets
Open the “style.QSS” files for editing, to change your theme, all the rules in it are prescribed in the Qt style sheets format.
Although the syntax is almost identical to CSS, it is modified for more convenience when working with widgets.
According to the Qt documentation, it is very easy to work with simple widgets such as buttons and to apply your own rules to all buttons in the program, all you need to use the Pushbuttons selector.
ConclusionÂ
What I like about the CodeLobster PHP development environment is the user interface that helps users to concentrate without distraction. It offers developers an awesome way to write beautiful code with its flexible options to configure color schemes and styles. As a developer, you will write appealing code and beautiful IDE plus it also offers an option to create your applications while getting aesthetic pleasure.
Naman Modi is a Professional Blogger, SEO Expert & Guest blogger at NamanModi.com, He is an Award-Winning Freelancer & Web Entrepreneur helping new entrepreneur’s launches their first successful online business.