Show tabs with a different character (Emacs)

Question

I\'d be happy to have very soft character \">>\" instead of white-space, like this:

Mono develop http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/pictures/Valabinding-classpad.png

Answer 1

On my Emacs version (24.3) no additional modules are needed. It's enough to launch

M-x whitespace-mode

To customize go to whitespace-style variable help,

C-h C-h v whitespace-style

This mode has many functionalities. To made it simpler one may choose not to use `Face visualization'.