Syntax Text Highlighter

When you first start writing lines of code you are likely to find it fairly easy to keep it organized, but, as you get more in-depth, the level of complication climbs. This makes it more difficult to keep your place in the code as well as making it more difficult to organize your code. Anyone who has experience with web development knows that organization is clutch. To help with this problem, most text editors come with a built-in syntax highlighter.

At The Web Development Group, we primarily build our sites on WordPress and Drupal. Both of these CMS’s come with great syntax highlighter plugins and modules that help keep all the code organized. With WordPress, for example, Syntax Highlighter Evolved allows the web developer to post syntax highlighted code to your site without losing its formatting.

So, what exactly is a syntax highlighter?

Simple — it colors the text of your code based on what you are coding. For example, all variables in your code might be highlighted green and string literals in purple. This allows anyone who is reading the code to be able to skip over large portions of code based on what they are looking for. It also helps the developer find errors in his coding; it makes it easy to find a missing bracket.

Lesson for the day:

When you first begin coding, you might think that the syntax highlighter is useless. The truth is, as soon as you begin to accumulate pages and pages of code the syntax highlighter will quickly become your best friend. Consider adding a WordPress plugin or a Drupal module that allows for you to easily post syntax highlighted code to your site.