DW 2017: How to disable underlining of all strings identical to the selected text in code view?

[leo.r]

Hi,

In DW 2017, when I select text in the code view, the selected text gets underlined - as well as all strings identical to the selected text on the page.

How can I disable this? I couldn't find anything is any settings or menus.

Thanks for any help!

Leo

[Preran]

This looks like a feature. Is it causing you undue distress? Because no one has replied to your post as yet, I am guessing that there is no alternative solution.

Feel free to make a feature request to the team using the wishlist form. Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[melissae47124582]

I am not the original poster but this is causing me undue distress. It's very distracting and makes it difficult to keep track of where I am working.

[leo.r]

With some delay: thanks Preran!

I'm the original poster - and yes this "feature" is sure causing me distress and sorrow. Like another poster mentioned, it's extremely distracting when editing the code.

I'm sure there are some uses for this feature, but it's beyond comprehension why Adobe would suddenly introduce it without an option to disable it. Just looking - fruitlessly - for such essential option caused me some serious waste of time.

For example, Text Wrangler (a free text editor) has a similar feature - naturally with an option to disable it in the Preferences (see screenshot).

This issue alone will cause me to switch back to DW 2015.

In any case, thanks again for your attention to this post. I'll submit the feature request as you suggested.

Leo

[ankushr40215001]

Hi All,

We are checking with our product team regarding this issue and update you soon with the provided info.

Please stay tuned.

Regards,

Ankush

[Mindy27540708sl2l]

It's 2022 and no solution?

Yes, undue stress, distraction, and slowing down quality work.

[klubar]

This is definitely a "what were they thinking feature". It's really distracting and adds almost no value (maybe to locate other uses of the same variable(?!). Mostly the interface "improvements" in DW 2017 are a big disappointment. My only hope is that the app is a little more stable than 2015.x and doesn't crash quite as frequently.

It's probably time to look for a new code editor.

[Yalpi · Accepted solution]

Hello,

There is no preference in UI to disable highlighting matching strings.

However you can turn it off by setting it false in brackets.json.

Following are the steps:

1. Quit Dreamweaver

2. Open brackets.json in a text editor available in below path

Win: %appdata%\Adobe\Dreamweaver CC 2017\en_US\Configuration\Brackets

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Dreamweaver CC 2017/en_US/Configuration/Brackets

3. Set "highlightMatches": false and save the file

4. Launch Dreamweaver

The feature should be turned off now.

[brentm46808071]

+1 YES TO DISTRESS.

This "underline feature" and the "orange highlight feature" are both driving my development team CRAZY to the point where we either want to roll back a version or find an alternate editor other than Dreamweaver. All of these new assistant-related features are garbage for development teams that know how to develop genuine code. I can;t find out how to turn off either of these things in options and I've been searching for a half hour. We don't have time for this.

[Nancy OShea]

You have the answer above.  You need to edit the brackets JSON file.

[brentm46808071]

Nancy, thank you - we did indeed see the solutions in which people are utilizing to work around these widespread issues. I was adding to the post to reinforce the importance of Adobe paying attention to anti-productive nature of these new so called "features" in CC2018. It's ridiculous that there's no way to turn them off without updating files.

[Nancy OShea]

One man's feature is another's bug.  I guess it all depends on how one looks at it.

[brentm46808071]

Nancy. Nothing I'm mentioning is technically a "bug" but rather design decisions by the Dreamweaver team. The orange/brown highlight "feature" is indeed terrible and it doesn't make any sense why it can't be disabled. It's literally ruining Dreamweaver.

[Nancy OShea]

As I said before, I don't see any orange highlighting because I use a different code color Theme.

If you can edit a LESS file, you can change the highlight colors to whatever tickles your fancy.

[leo.r]

Nancy,

I attached a screenshot that illustrates the issue.

Regarding, your advice to edit the LESS file, there are several issues:

-First, even the notion that users now have to learn how to edit some cryptic text files is absolutely disturbing. We already had perfect GUI for code coloring in DW 2015. Thanks to implementation of Brackets in DW 2017, users lost some essential functionality and lost the ability to edit code coloring in human oriented way - while gaining absolutely nothing.

-There's indeed a method, suggested by another user, how to change tag highlighting color for some acceptable results - but only for the light color schemes. There's no known way to change it for the dark color scheme like in my screenshot - and which I (and many other users) were using for years. If you know of such method, please let us know - it will be greatly appreciated.

-There's still no way to disable this tag highlighting - which, even when it preserves code coloring, is an annoying and unnecessary feature for many users.

-And as a cherry on top: editing LESS files doesn't even work in DW 2018 - I filed a bug for this. I have to use DW 2017 to change code appearance to at least something acceptable.

Like I mentioned, the loss of time and productivity thanks to downgrading Dreamweaver's code coloring has been significant. For self-employed people like me it translates directly in loss of money. And all this is funded by our subscription payments.

I'd like to emphasize again that I'm referring strictly to Dreamweaver development team, not Adobe in general. Dreamweaver team let their users down. This frustration accumulated during more than a year of us, users, asking the team to restore basic essential functionality we had in earlier versions.

[Jon Fritz]

The option no longer exists in the interface.

Adobe replaced the code view entirely (when they moved from CC2015 to CC2017) with a somewhat watered down version of Brackets. When they did that, they removed almost everything dealing with code coloring and highlighting from the preferences interface. Now the only ways to change it are to use a different theme as Nancy suggests, or modify the program files to better suit your needs.

[Mindy27540708sl2l]

Does Adobe even listen to us?

It's 2022 and it's still there. Very annoying, distracting, and infringing on quality work.

Hey Adobe? How about it? Do I have to go back to CS6?

[Nancy OShea]

@Mindy27540708sl2l 

You have resurrected a 6+ year old topic from 2016. 

The answer today is the same as it was 6 years ago. Edit your Code Theme's .less file or download another Code Theme you like from GitHub.

https://github.com/Brackets-Themes

FYI, Dreamweaver is in minimal maintenance mode now. No new features are planned except occasional security and compatibility updates.

Hope that helps.  If you have another question, please start a new discussion topic.  Thank you.

[This discussion locked by moderator.]

[leo.r]

thanks Nancy,

but this is only partially correct, unfortunately.

there's no way to disable the disastrous tag highlighting. and we had this option in Preferences in DW 2015.

isn't it astonishing that:

-in the year 2017 we have to edit a text file instead of using the GUI - like we could in previous versions

-important features are being REMOVED from DW, resulting in significant loss of time and productivity (which my experience confirms, as well as of other users on this and other forums). I'm referring to tag highlighting and the ability to easily edit the code coloring schemes via GUI - like we could in DW 2015

all of this is supported by our subscription payments.

while other Adobe teams, such as InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, are working hard to make their products better with each new release, the situation with Dreamweaver appears to be exactly the opposite, sadly.