Early Access Program Features Releases

Better readability with PhpStorm’s improved syntax coloring

When we introduced Darcula with PhpStorm 6, we wanted to provide a dark look and feel which feels natural to a lot of developers (read an interview with the creator of Darcula). One of the advantages Darcula provides is that it’s easier on the eyes and improves readability.

The fresh PhpStorm 7 EAP improves readability even more thanks to additional syntax coloring for various constructs. We now have separate colors for:

  • Function and method declarations
  • Function calls, static and instance method calls

  • Classes and interfaces, static and instance class fields

Here is a comparison of the same code in PhpStorm 6 (left) and PhpStorm 7 (right):

These new colors can be customized in the editor settings under IDE Settings | Editor | Colors & Fonts | PHP:

Give PhpStorm 7 EAP a try and let us hear your thoughts in the issue tracker, the comments below or in our forums!

Develop with pleasure!
– JetBrains PhpStorm Team

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