Please do not rely only on the preview images of this theme (they are of average quality), but try it. Especially if you work at night and for many hours, almost certainly, among all my skins, you will find the colors suitable to avoid eye strain.

Tip: the display name of theme is as follow: the first part (e.g.: Zenburn) is token colors name, the second (e.g.: Dark Matter) is the main related colors structure, the third (e.g.: Nadir) part of name is the background suite and UI main colors, last part (e.g.: Viserion) is simply the representation name for main foreground/highlights color.

Table of contents

1. Zenburn token colors based skins
2. Zenburn Dark Matter Preview Gallery
   • Anthracite (1 skin): Anthracite Gray Background and Cold, Desatured Token Colors
   • Cold (10 skins): Cold Gray Background and Cold Token Colors
   • Deep Sea (3 skins): Deep blue flat UI and Desatured Token Colors
   • EclipseDS (5 skins): Eclipse DevStyle Gray Background and Desatured Token Colors
   • Flat (10 skins): Flat Gray Background and Default Token Colos
   • Insomnia (8 skins): Flat Grayed UI and Satured Token Colors
   • Low Blue (1 skin): Low Blue Light on UI and Token Colors
   • Midnight (2 skins): Midnight Blue Background and Cold, Desatured Token Colors (Telegram X Midnight Theme)
   • Nadir (10 skins): Flat Grayed UI and Desatured Token Colors
   • Nirvana (10 skins): Low Blue Light only on Token Colors
   • Warm (10 skins): Warm Gray Background and Warm Token Colors
3. All my Themes
4. Fonts for coding
5. Latest Changelog for Zenburn Dark Matter Theme
6. About Token Colors
   • Apophis based
   • Zenburn based
7. About my PHP Script "VSCode Themes Master"
8. Gratitude
9. License

Zenburn token colors based skins

All the skins shown below are part of a suite designed to try to reduce visual fatigue while using Visual Studio Code.

The ultimate goal of the suite is to offer a good chance to find a theme that reduces disturbing elements and eye strain as much as possible.

However, attempts were made to leave error signals and selections clearly visible with moderate color contrasts.

Tip 1: The skins are quite similar but you can find the right color intensity based on the sRGB representation of your monitor and the sensitivity of your eyes to certain frequencies.

Tip 2: If you like code version control and want to add PHPDoc / JSDoc (Documentor) data to your functions, try Version Boss! Version Boss is a free extension that simplifies versioning of scripting files. Download it at Marketplace.

Zenburn Dark Matter Preview Gallery

Anthracite (1 skin): Anthracite Gray Background and Cold, Desatured Token Colors

Anthracite - Komodo

Cold (10 skins): Cold Gray Background and Cold Token Colors

Cold - Viserion
Cold - Alcatraz	Cold - Black pond has my heart	Cold - Burn	Cold - Klimt
Cold - Komodo	Cold - Meabh	Cold - Moai	Cold - Mystic River
Cold - Obsidian

Deep Sea (3 skins): Deep blue flat UI and Desatured Token Colors

Deep Sea - Viserion
Deep Sea - Burn	Deep Sea - Mystic River

EclipseDS (5 skins): Eclipse DevStyle Gray Background and Desatured Token Colors

EclipseDS - Obsidian
EclipseDS - Black pond has my heart	EclipseDS - Klimt	EclipseDS - Komodo	EclipseDS - Meabh

Flat (10 skins): Flat Gray Background and Default Token Colos

Flat - Black pond has my heart
Flat - Alcatraz	Flat - Burn	Flat - Klimt	Flat - Komodo
Flat - Meabh	Flat - Moai	Flat - Mystic River	Flat - Obsidian
Flat - Viserion

Insomnia (8 skins): Flat Grayed UI and Satured Token Colors

Insomnia - Obsidian
Insomnia - Black pond has my heart	Insomnia - Burn	Insomnia - Komodo	Insomnia - Meabh
Insomnia - Moai	Insomnia - Mystic River	Insomnia - Viserion

Low Blue (1 skin): Low Blue Light on UI and Token Colors

Low Blue - Obsidian

Midnight (2 skins): Midnight Blue Background and Cold, Desatured Token Colors (Telegram X Midnight Theme)

Midnight - Klimt
Midnight - Viserion

Nadir (10 skins): Flat Grayed UI and Desatured Token Colors

Nadir - Komodo
Nadir - Alcatraz	Nadir - Black pond has my heart	Nadir - Burn	Nadir - Klimt
Nadir - Meabh	Nadir - Moai	Nadir - Mystic River	Nadir - Obsidian
Nadir - Viserion

Nirvana (10 skins): Low Blue Light only on Token Colors

Nirvana - Moai
Nirvana - Alcatraz	Nirvana - Black pond has my heart	Nirvana - Burn	Nirvana - Klimt
Nirvana - Komodo	Nirvana - Meabh	Nirvana - Mystic River	Nirvana - Obsidian
Nirvana - Viserion

Warm (10 skins): Warm Gray Background and Warm Token Colors

Warm - Black pond has my heart
Warm - Alcatraz	Warm - Burn	Warm - Klimt	Warm - Komodo
Warm - Meabh	Warm - Moai	Warm - Mystic River	Warm - Obsidian
Warm - Viserion

All my Themes

All my Themes on Marketplace.

• Zenburn Dark Matter
• Apophis Dark Matter
• Zenburn In Grays

Fonts for coding

The settings for the following fonts are correctly tested on a 24" monitor FullHD and 32" Monitor QHD. The indicated sizes are the minimum to obtain a clear display of the fonts.

Tip 1: Readability rating is based on the readability of the font to the size of 10pt: the fonts with rating 5.0 have these characteristics, the other evaluations indicate that the font is readable at a size greater than 10pt but that they occupy more space and, consequently you have fewer rows and columns per screen page. Some fonts at the size of 12pt have rating 4.5 because they occupy same visual space to the size of 10pt of other fonts present in the selection with rating 5.0. At size of 12pt/14pt , all fonts rating is 5.0/5.0.

Tip 2: Some fonts Weight property start from 300/400/500: values below these values has no effect. Others, instead, start from 100 but can be thiny and unreadable below size 12pt. Note: the Weight value is the minimum value for readability, at the indicated size, on my monitor: you can find other setting more comfortable for your eyes.

Tip 3: When you go to download page you can find different variants of the same font but with same font name (e.g. version with different line-height or letter "k" with no loop): you cannot install all font variants because they have same font name in font manager: when you install a font variant, the previous font variant will be overwritten.

Tip 4: if available, install the fonts in OTF format.

{
// ...

// Some fonts need to be right set to be clearly legible:
// please, adjust these settings in "settings.json".
// --
// Note 1: "editor.fontLigatures" can be ever "true";
// Note 2: "editor.fontWeight" value must be written
//         in quotation marks (e.g. "400") even if it is a numeric value!

 "editor.fontSize": 10,
 "editor.lineHeight": 14,
 "editor.letterSpacing": 0,
 "editor.fontWeight": "400",
 "editor.fontLigatures": true,
 "editor.fontFamily":  "Hack, Iosevka, Mensch, Monofur NF, Menlo, B612 Mono, DaddyTimeMono, Cascadia Code, Sometype Mono, Source Code Pro, Hasklig, Roboto Mono, Fira Mono, Fira Code, Dejavu Sans Code, Envy Code R, Dejavu Sans Mono, Victor Mono, Inconsolata, Input Mono Condensed, PT Mono, Fantasque Sans Mono, Input Mono Condensed, Input Mono, Fantasque Sans Mono",

 // ....
 }

Latest Changelog for Zenburn Dark Matter Theme

See full Changelog for previous versions.

Note 1: This Changelog is for the whole Dark Matter Suite, not just for this specific Theme.

Note 2: [Development] and [UI Manager] sections in Changelog are addressed to the developer to remind him of any important changes that occurred during the writing of the code and do not always concern improvements made to the extension or to the theme.

Version 1.1.132

• [Theme] Some improvements to theme colors;
• [Theme] Some improvements to token colors;
• [Readme] Added new fonts suggestion in README.md;
• [UI Manager] Added button to go directly to marketplace of extension (override the label of first SVG badge).

Version 1.1.129

• [Theme] Satured Mystic River skin's main color and added to Apophis Dark Matter Theme;
• [Theme] Added Cold, Flat, Warm (Grays) skin's sub-set to Apophis Dark Matter Theme;
• [UI Manager] Added live badges strip under each theme panel.
• [Development] Added functions for get installs number dynamically from badges;
• [Development] Added functions for themes installs statistics;
• [UI Manager] Solved CSS issue with sticky header.

Version 1.1.128

• [Development] Improved function that determine VSCode Themes Master version based on each included file;
• [Development] Improved function for Text Color calculation on background color (based on Luminance);
• [Development] Improved function for Luminance calculation (with calculation of Middle Color when colors are overlayed and with transpacency);
• [Development] Added function for Middle Color: overlay result of foreground color wit opacity on background color whit/whitout opacity on default (deep) background color;
• [Development] Improved line highlight background for foreground readability.

About Token Colors

Apophis based

Apophis variants is based on philosophy of Zenburn token colors.

Zenburn based

Zenburn variants derives from the combination of Eclipse Zenburn Theme and Eclipse DevStyle Extension. These variants has a dark gray cold/flat/warm backgrounds (based on the theme you installed), desaturated token colors (for code) and experimental Nirvana (Low Blue Light only on token colors) and Low Blue (applied to all main set of skins and token colors) with some exceptions:

• some icons cannot seems to be filtered;
• images in extensions README.md and in image viewer cannot be filtered.

About my PHP Script "VSCode Themes Master"

The Zenburn Cold Gray prototype was initially a manual editing of the VSCode settings and some tokens, based on the Zenburn theme porting from Eclipse IDE (see below the thanks, to the paragraph Gratitude) in conjunction with the background of the DevStyle extension for Eclipse IDE.

Realizing that, to optimize some aspects of the theme, I would have had to evaluate an infinite series of colors, I decided that I would have done first to build mathematical functions for optimizing and correcting saturation / brightness / color / transparency / contrast of configurations already consolidated.

Specifically, I created VSCode Themes Master in PHP (localhost script, not distributed) that allows you to set the basic colors of the skin, on which they are calculated, with a parametric and configurable reference system for each variant, all the others interface colors, applying, at the same time, tonal variations both on the interface and on the colors of the tokens.

My personal need to optimize the colors of the VScode interface to make it uniform to the Eclipse IDE interface (Zenburn + DevStyle), has led me to notice that, despite almost all my monitors are from the same manufacturer and despite having selected the temperature color on the sRGB standard (which therefore has brightness, contrast and range set to specific values), the visual impact, on the same theme variant, is different: more saturated and warm on some and more cold and desaturated on others .

VSCode Themes Master allows me to build all the files necessary for the publication of the theme and, for this reason, it was easy (but not so easy) for me to test and distribute single themes with many color variations of the UI and tonal variations of the tokens for the code, to try to standardize the display between monitors with "different" sRGB representations (for example: using a cold theme on monitors with a tendency to warm colors and vice versa, or a flat theme that, in some cases, seems to be the correct compromise between extremes).

Starting from VSCode Themes Master V. 1.2.40, I can generate themes, not only from TextMate files, but also using the export of token colors from Visual Studio Code in JSON format.

Gratitude

Zenburn based Themes: many thanks to Ryan Olson and Zenburn . You can download the original porting by Ryan Olson, on which the first version of this variant's Token Colors were based, at Marketplace: Zenburn Theme by Ryan Olson.

License

MIT