Has anyone managed to fix the themes on the Express version of Visual Studio 2012 for Windows Desktop? I have tried the solutions that work on the paid version, as described in another Stackoverflow question. I managed to change colors, but the Menus remain as MENU’s, and the small, colorless icons still crouch in the task bar.
EDIT: Please note that what hope to see as an answer is, “Yes, I did it for the Express version, and here’s how.” Failing that, I could accept, “Sorry, you lose, and here’s why.”
EDIT 2: Microsoft says the “Blue” theme is the same as VS 2010. Perhaps I did not make it clear that we already have a partial answer. The “change colors” link shows how to perform that task without the plugin that only works with the paid version.
Yea! I found another piece of the puzzle. To get rid of the UPPERCASE MENU’s in the Express version, the magic entry is key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WDExpress\11.0\General. Add a DWORD named SuppressUppercaseConversion and give it a value 1. Yep, exactly like what Derek said, except for the WDExpress part. So that makes the menu headings easily readable again.
As noted in the question, Express users can get the colors back by following the instructions that Alin Constantin blogged.
Only the little gray icons remain to be repaired. Those are not too bad.