One of the traits that stands out is its compatibility with all of our products — Angular, MyEclipse, CodeMix — and even with Eclipse itself (as long as it’s at least Neon), making your coding experience truly pleasant. Doing some rugged work on any of these doesn’t have to be as taxing on your eyes as the “mud” on those infamous jeans. The solarized color scheme is not a fad; on the contrary, it has survived the test of time due to a simple reason — it is smooth on your eyes, as explained by Ethan Schoonover (source).
At a first glance, there seems to be a disagreement (since a while back) as to whether a traditional light theme or a dark one is better. The main argument supporting a regular white theme is the fact that since the overwhelming majority of websites and a significant quantity of software are light-colored, it represents less strain for the eyes to be switching between them. On the biological level it makes sense: after staring at a dark screen and all of a sudden changing to a white one, the amount of light that hits our eyes increases drastically — an uncomfortable feeling indeed. There is also the idea of readability. Research has shown that in some cases the common combo of dark text on light background is the ideal — when reading paragraphs of text (source).
However, when it comes to the web development community, most have been voicing a very enthusiastic opinion, since a long time ago, about using a dark theme. When coding (and not reading paragraph after paragraph), our eyes actually feel more rested, provided that there is not extreme contrast either — white text on a deeply black background is not the ideal of beauty! For those concerned about sustainability, such work mode is more environmentally friendly: energy is conserved due to a diminished use of power — this claim might actually be a bit of a stretch, though (source).
Ever since its release, our Darkest Dark theme has received an overwhelming response, as exemplified by a happy user on the ABAPBLOG.com:
“Dark theme is available in Eclipse since a long time, but there were many problems with easy setting of all colors in editors, windows and popups. Sometimes you had to even adjust your system settings to be able to adjust some colors. This discouraged many persons to switch to the dark side of eclipse. But now there is a new hope for it! Darkest Dark Theme by Genuitec which can be found in eclipse marketplace hits the spot here.”
He is delighted by all the possibilities this theme presents from playing with font color settings to actually improving the regular icons.
At Genuitec our mission is to make your web development a well-grounded happiness, so we’ve taken that solarized idea further and have created a way for you to get directly involved in designing its appearance. Not only can you customize your editor colors but also actively participate and create your own custom icons for a fresh look. It gets even better — you can share the wealth, since your icon can become a candidate for inclusion in the Darkest Dark, so that other developers can continue pulling all the weight with joy. At this point, the process is straightforward: you submit your icon to us for consideration, and we might include it as part of our theme for everyone to enjoy your contribution.
It doesn’t stop there: in a matter of a few months, you will be able to share your icons with other users directly (well, that’s our idea for our newest dark collection of the season). This way, not only do you get to enjoy our new annotations, fresh-looking icons, flat scrollbars, as well as an actual dark UI, but also have a say in the appearance of your own workspace — and get a chance to share it with the world of fellow developers.