Why Are So Many Dev Tools Orange?

This isn't a comprehensive survey by any means... but the four dev tools I'm using right now all have orange icons...

• Mozilla
• Visual Studio
• Codesmith
• MS SQL Studio

Just as acronyms all scramble to include the letter 'X' so too, dev tools scramble toward the colour orange.

Note to self: 'OrangeX' would be the ultimate name for a dev tool.

(and if you think Mozilla isn't a dev tool... then you're just not using it right)

'Dylan Bennett' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:36:29 GMT, sez:

Funny that you mention that. I just looked down in my quick launch and saw my orange Aptana IDE icon.

'James Gregory' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:47:53 GMT, sez:

Resharper has a half-purple, half-orange icon, eerie. I think you're onto something.

'brahmma' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:44:29 GMT, sez:

Eek! I look at the Embedded Visual C++ icon on my desktop and that's ~orange too!

'Tim Bartle' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:58:09 GMT, sez:

Thoughtworks have recently released an agile project management tool called Mingle. Guess what? Orange all over the place!

'Chris Wallis' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:09:15 GMT, sez:

Please evaluate our new C++ build environment:

http://www.jaffamake....

Only kidding. Yup - all orange here.

'Mike' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:55:54 GMT, sez:

It's because orange and light gray look good.

'Suraj' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:56:18 GMT, sez:

And valve just released 'Orange Box'. Hmmm so lets see: http://www.google.com/search?q=orange+color+psychology

Some amusing things are there about the orange color.

'John' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:12:22 GMT, sez:

On a long enough timeline, every color stabilizes to orange.

'Jim Lang' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:17:08 GMT, sez:

Slickedit - Green & Black
VB6 (don't laugh) - other colors
Visual Studio - has orange
Firefox - orange
Query Analyzer - lt blue & gray
Dreamweaver - green & blue

But most of the stuff I'm working on has orange involved in the icons. It's pretty easy on the eyes.

'Kyralessa' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:03:49 GMT, sez:

Hmmm. The icon for dotTrace has an orange dot in the middle.

And the inner part of the SourceSafe 2005 icon is kind of orange.

And one of the gears in the Reflector icon is...orange.

Creepy.

'Jon Schneider' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:47:06 GMT, sez:

My Windows XP theme itself is black and orange!

Microsoft released this theme several months ago to celebrate the release of the Zune. I'm not a Zune owner, but I thought the mostly-black theme was cool, so I installed it and had been thinking of it as a "Firefox" theme. But I like the "dev tools" idea better. :-)

You can get this theme at: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078

'Karter' on Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:03:57 GMT, sez:

RSS icons.

'Ryan Patterson' on Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:32:21 GMT, sez:

I think it's because construction's colors are orange.

'Chas' on Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:11:08 GMT, sez:

Lotus Notes is orange too.

(Yes, I do hate it, no I have no choice.)

'Rob' on Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:11:45 GMT, sez:

I add Outlook, Explorer, Paint Shop Pro, RoyalTS, and Winamp to that mix: http://blog.throbs.net/2005/12/22/Notice+A+Chromatic+Theme.aspx

'Rob' on Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:17:48 GMT, sez:

Oh, and I just remembered the TMBG theme song for The Chopping Block: o/~ "oranges and graphic design" o/~

'Nidonocu' on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:09:02 GMT, sez:

You might be fooled in to thinking the Expression suite breaks this rule..
Until you look at the primary colour on the Expression Suite box art: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

'RV' on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:56:26 GMT, sez:

Funny you noticed that. Orange is a great color though!

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