Issue #12 (Customizing the Cursor)07/13/22
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Most developers are pretty accustomed to seeing a thin, blinking cursor inside the editable portion of any app. This is of course also true in your IDE of choice. If you're using VS Code, there are some things you can do to alter the appearance of the cursor, if you wish.
Open your UI Settings and type "cursor" in the search field. You'll see a number of different results, but I'll focus on a few of the ones directly related to adjusting the cursor.
First, you can change the "Cursor Blinking" setting to one of five options: blink (the default), smooth, phase, expand, and solid. All of these will animate the blinking cursor in unique ways except the last one (solid) which simply holds the cursor as a solid unblinking line. If you're irritated by any kind of blinking, you might like that last option.
Along with changing the animation of the blink, you can also alter the look of the cursor shape via the "Cursor Style" setting. You can select line (the default), block, underline, line-thin, block-outline, and underline-thin. They're all pretty self-explanatory and you can see an example of the "block" cursor below.
Finally, if you choose the default "line" cursor, you have the option to adjust the width of the cursor. You can enter an integer between 1 and 10. Some might like a slightly thicker cursor. A value of about 4 or 5 might be a nice change so you can easily spot where the cursor is currently located, as shown in the image below.
The above uses a cursor size of "5". Does that make a world of difference? Not necessarily, but it certainly makes the cursor's position a little more clear. You could go bigger, but in that case I would guess you'd be better off going with a "block" cursor. When using "block", you don't have the option to change the size. But it's big enough to suit the need to easily spot the cursor wherever it's located.
Now on to this week's hand-picked links!
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VS Code Tools
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Darcula Theme — An attractive dark theme for Visual Studio Code based on the Darcula theme from JetBrains IDEs.
Base16 Terminal Colors — A gallery of color schemes that you can copy and paste into your user settings to customize your VS Code theme.
Python extension for Visual Studio Code — A popular extension for Python devs that includes IntelliSense, linting, debugging (multi-threaded, remote), Jupyter Notebooks, code formatting, refactoring, unit tests, and more.
Tailwind CSS IntelliSense — Enhances the Tailwind development experience by providing advanced features such as autocomplete, syntax highlighting, and linting, specific for Tailwind.
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VS Code Articles
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VS Code 1.69 (June 2022) — The latest updates for VS code include a new Command Center, Do Not Disturb Mode, Light/Dark toggle, a color theme tester, and lots more.
The Visual Studio Code Server — VS Code blog post introducing a private preview release of the backend service that runs many of the remote features that have been released in the past few years.
Early Merge Conflict Detection Across All Branches in VS Code — If you use GitLive in VS Code, this post announces that GitLive's flagship feature, early merge conflict detection, now works across all branches in VS Code,
Leads For Your Business or Agency Done Right — Malthus helps you connect with new prospects and leads for your business or agency needs to help drive sales and growth. View thousands of handpicked companies that just raised millions and are likely to outsource and engage in B2B sales. Sponsor
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