// Commented Out

Every­one codes dif­fer­ently and has their own way that they like to pro­gram, myself included. So, I thought I would take a sec­ond to share the typog­ra­phy choices I made for cod­ing Action­Script and why.

I work on a 30″ HD mon­i­tor [ED note: freak­ing sweet, thanks boss!], so it is very impor­tant for me to take mea­sures to pro­tect my eyes. One thing that helps is mak­ing my cod­ing envi­ron­ment much more high con­trast and easy to stare at for hours at a time. I got the idea from an arti­cle by “the Ham­stu” enti­tled “The Typog­ra­phy of Code,” which I rec­om­mend as a fun place to start.

Here’s the basic run­down for me. Dark back­ground, high con­trast col­ors, Con­so­las Reg­u­lar 10 point font. I chose Con­so­las after try­ing many, many oth­ers, includ­ing the ones listed in the arti­cle I men­tioned.  You name a cod­ing font, I have tried it. Con­so­las looks great at any size and is highly readable.

Win­dows users may already have it if they have installed Office 2007. If not, you can still grab the font, and some other beau­ti­ful new type­faces by installing the Microsoft Pow­er­point Viewer 2007.

Mac users can get the new font set from the Open Office XML Con­verter appar­ently. I work on a PC (I know, I know) so I have no way of test­ing it. If it doesn’t work, I have a few other alter­na­tives, though admit­tedly, they’re a lit­tle more involved.

As far as color choices, I’ve included the color swatches .clr file, a text file with the Hex val­ues, and CS3 fla so you can grab the col­ors and start using them right away if you like.

And just so you know, there is a Flex For­mat­ter Eclipse Plu­gin, and you can always just mod­ify your ‘Col­ors and Fonts’ /‘Syntax Col­or­ing’ in Flex/Flash Builder.

Happy cod­ing!