That message means either that the current C::B SDK version is 1.11.5 and your plugin's manifest reads 1.11.8, or that the current SDK version is 1.11.8 and your manifest reads 1.11.5. Likely the former; change your SdkVersion "release" attribute to 5.
As far as your loathsome colors go, many colors can be changed in the Environment and Editor settings, but the defaults should never be unreadable. You may want to consider poking around in your OS' visual settings, or even changing to a more mainstream distribution such as Ubuntu, Fedora Core, openSUSE, etc.