Adding color printing back to Visual Studio 2010 (via the new, free, Color Printing Extension)…

The Visual Studio Blog - Color Printing Extension Now Available!

“We are pleased to announce the availability of Color Printing as a free extension for Visual Studio 2010!  By default, VS 2010 prints only in black and white; this extension restores support for printing code in color.

Installation and Setup

Installing Color Printing requires Visual Studio 2010 Pro, Premium, or Ultimate (the Express editions do not support extensions).  You should be able to simply download and install this extension from the VS Gallery or via the Tools menu->Extension Manager.

Using the Color Printing Extension

Once you’ve installed the Color Printing extension, you should be able to print as you typically would – simply use File->Print or press Ctrl+P.  No extra steps are required.  You might notice that the print dialog looks slightly different, but it should be very similar to print dialogs you would see in Visual Studio or other applications:

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Known Issues

Although we believe this extension restores most of the color printing functionality available in VS 2008 and earlier, there are a few known issues with this version:

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Sometimes you just need to see the code on paper and seeing it in color can make a huge difference. This extension returns color support to VS, and includes all “printing” to XPS, Send to OneNote and normal printers too.

Here’s the same code printed to XPS.

Before;

After;

Color makes a big difference in the readability, doesn’t it?