Looking for some of the best TextMate themes for Ruby on Rails? Well look no further as I’ve done all the hard work for you and have compiled a list of some of the most popular themes 🙂
Railscasts – the most popular Rails TextMate theme! (Download)
I think it’s fair to say the theme Ryan Bates uses in his excellent Railscasts is probably the most popular Ruby on Rails theme out there. It’s a slight variation of the Idle Fingers theme, and one that many other screencast producers also use. There’s no surprise to its popularity, it’s a great looking and well thought out theme!
Code School – the new kid on the block! (Download)
This is a theme I knocked up after seeing the one used in the new (and brilliant!) Code School Rails Best Practises course. It’s based on the Sunkist theme (which comes with TextMate) and is ideal for monitors that use higher end lcd panels with wider colour gamuts – the tones and colours should make for comfortable viewing over long periods, meaning less eye fatigue. Along with the Railscasts theme, it is my favourite.
I’ve also created a variation that removes the underline from the class name (I’m generally not keen on underlines in syntax highlighting). Offering it here in case you prefer it too: Code School – without underline.tmTheme
Vibrant Ink – its… very vibrant! (Download)
When I was looking for Rails themes I noticed this one, in (I think) one of the Yehuda Katz screencasts, and then subsequently found he offered a mirrored download on his blog. I don’t know much about it but guess it is one of the older themes. It’s a bit too, er, vibrant for me – I prefer themes that are easier on the eye.
Twilight – commonly used and comes with TextMate
This theme comes bundled with TextMate. You often see it as an option on sites like pastie.org, or included in code highlighting plugins for blogging software. It’s a nice theme and I can see why it’s popular.
IR Black (Download)
This is an example of what else you might find popular – which seems to be themes with darkish backgrounds (as generally they are easier to read). This one is a bit too contrasty for me, but it may be fine for you (it depends on what sort of monitor you have too, tbh).
To install a theme – simply download to your desktop and then double click. You can then delete the copy on your desktop.