This is a heavily modified fork of http://github.com/defunkt/colored gem, with many sensible pull requests combined. Since the authors of the original gem no longer support it, this might, perhaps, be considered a good alternative. Simple gem that adds various color methods to String class, and can be used as follows: require 'colored2' puts 'this is red'.red puts 'this is red with a yellow background'.red.on.yellow puts 'this is red with and italic'.red.italic puts 'this is green bold'.green.bold << ' and regular'.green puts 'this is really bold blue on white but reversed'.bold.blue.on.white.reversed puts 'this is regular, but '.red! << 'this is red '.yellow! << ' and yellow.'.no_color! puts ('this is regular, but '.red! do 'this is red '.yellow! do ' and yellow.'.no_color! end end)