Syntax Highlighting improves the understanding of source code by changing the font and/or the background. Code elements can be detected more quickly using highlighting. It allows a visual distinction of fields, properties, method parameters, variables, classes, structures, enumerations, methods, events and much more.

Highlights
Highlights are used to emphasize specific code elements according to its meaning or purpose. This can be done by the font formatting or the background.

Suggestions:
different font colors for types, constructors, methods or events help to differentiate them faster from other text
italicized method parameters can be distinguished directly from local variables

Examples:
Namespaces
Interfaces
Classes
Class Constructors
Class Deconstructors
Structures
Structure Constructors
Enumerations
Enumeration Members
Primitve Types
Delegates
Events
Sub (Visual Basic)
Labels
Methods
Method Parameters
Named Method Parameters
Properties
Type Parameters
Fields
Variables
Comments
Numbers
Operators
Strings
Keywords
Preprocessor Statements

Decorators
Decorators allow equal emphasis of different code elements which have similarities (e.g. static methods and static properties).

Suggestions:
static methods, fields or properties are immediately recognizable as such by bold typefaces
extension methods can be distinguished from normal methods by an underline

Examples:
Constants
Declarations
Structure Members
Extension Methods
Static
Virtual
Override
Syntax Error
Syntax Warning
Internal
Private
Protected
Public
Own Code (Same Assembly)
External Code (Referenced Assembly)

Area Highlights
Area Highlights highlight code areas by means of their background representation. This structures the source code into visual areas, thereby improving orientation. Large code areas where the beginning or the end are not visible can be identified more easily by the highlighting.

Suggestions:
Preprocessor areas, classes, methods, properties, or regions can be visually highlighted
important code blocks can be marked conspicuously (e.g. unsafe, fixed)

Examples:
Constructors
Deconstructors
Methods
Regions
Fixed
Lock
Unsafe
Using
SyncLock (Visual Basic)
Preprocessor Define
Preprocessor Error
Preprocessor If
Preprocessor Line
Preprocessor Pragma Warning
Preprocessor Pragma Checksum
Preprocessor Undefine
Preprocessor Warning

Indicators
Indicators mark the location of specific keywords with a visual marker in the left side bar of Visual studio

Suggestions:
early outs and returns are more noticeable

Examples:
Throw
Return
Break
Goto
Continue
Exit (Visual Basic)

Codinion provides syntax and semantic highlighting for C# and VB. It comes with two default color themes for the light and dark Visual Studio. Furthermore, you could change all colors according to your needs. It adds a symbol searchbar to every C# and VB code window which helps finding Methods, Fields, Properties, Events, Classes. The searchbar provides different search options like include, exclude or acronyms. It contains an open file in solution dialog which is able to find every file in an solution and can open it directly. This dialog supports the same search options as the symbol searchbar. The find symbol in solution dialog helps to find symbols across all files in a solution.

Visual Studio Banner are very helpful if you work with any source control system like svn, git or else and have to work with the same solution from different branches. You can define the banner for each branch which helps to identify the solution. The banner will replace the visual studio thumbnail from the windows taskbar icon (windows 7 required).

Only for V.I.P