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If you are programmer or actually if you at least have some basic coding skills, you’ll find this article useful. For example just look at this page source – without highlighting that whole code is just a bunch of plain black text and it is really hard to find specific things if everything looks the same. Thankfully there are many highlighting scripts available, for example Notepad++ also supports and highlights different code snippets. These code syntax highlighters actually are doing mainly the same thing, but with more options, big coding language support, better integration – really in our days you just need to choose one – there are too many tools available anyway.
Use these syntax highlighters in daily coding or just in cases where you are sharing code with friends, want to add that code in your blog post (by the way there is SyntaxHighlighter WordPress plugin available too) or just want to rapidly read and maintain it – use online syntax highlighters in that case and pick your favorite one from this article!
I definitely think this syntax highlighter tool should be your choice – this tool is supported very well and offers many options, extensions and integrations with other programs and platforms, but however I want to offer you other tools too to choose from.
SyntaxHighlighter is here to help a developer/coder to post code snippets online with ease and have it look pretty. It’s 100% Java Script based and it doesn’t care what you have on your server.
The idea behind SyntaxHighlighter is to allow insertion of colored code snippets on a web page without relying on any server side scripts. SyntaxHighlighter isn’t for those looking for ability to edit highlighted code.
Extensions & Integration – check out this page too, because you can find there WordPress extensions, Ruby on Rail plugins and much more integration extensions, should be handy!
GeSHi supports PHP5 and Windows, and has even been used to highlight code on ASP pages, it really supports and highlights almost every coding language, you should check out his website to read more – very powerful tool!
GeSHi aims to be a simple but powerful highlighting class, with the following goals:
Doesn’t get any easier than this to create a web page from your source code. This online highlighter tool offers many coding languages you can choose to highlight together with several options, you can check/uncheck before highlighting code:
A Javascript module and CSS file that allows syntax highlighting of source code snippets in an html page.
The comments in prettify.js are authoritative but the lexer should work on a number of languages including C and friends, Java, Python, Bash, SQL, HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, and Makefiles. It works passably on Ruby, PHP, VB, and Awk and a decent subset of Perl and Ruby, but, because of commenting conventions, doesn’t work on Smalltalk, or CAML-like languages.
Features:
Pygments is a generic syntax highlighter for general use in all kinds of software such as forum systems, wikis or other applications that need to prettify source code.
Pygments supports an ever-growing range of languages, you can check full list supported language listing here
Highlight.js highlights syntax in code examples on blogs, forums and in fact on any web pages. It’s very easy to use because it works automatically: finds blocks of code, detects a language, highlights it.
This program supports following languages – 1C, AVR Assembler, Apache, Axapta, Bash, C#, C++, CSS, DOS .bat, Delphi, Django, HTML, XML, Ini, Java, Javascript, Lisp, MEL (Maya Embedded Language), PHP, Perl, Python, Python profile, RenderMan (RIB, RSL), Ruby, SQL, Smalltalk, VBScript, diff.
There isn’t available actual demo page just download link, but it is very easy to use this highlighter as all others by the way.
SHJS is a JavaScript program which highlights source code passages in HTML documents. Documents using SHJS are highlighted on the client side by the web browser.
SHJS Support many languages too – Bison, CC++, C#, ChangeLog, CSS, Desktop files, DiffFlex, GLSL, Haxe, HTML, Java, Java properties files,JavaScript, JavaScript with DOM, LaTeX. LDAP files, Log files, LSM (Linux Software Map) files, M4, Makefile, Objective Caml, Oracle SQL, Pascal, Perl, PHP,Prolog, Python, RPM spec files, Ruby, S-Lang, Scala, Shell, SQLSt, andard ML, Tcl, XML, Xorg configuration files.
CodePress is web-based source code editor with syntax highlighting written in JavaScript that colors text in real time while it’s being typed in the browser.
This editor offers several features like real-time syntax highlighting, code snippets, auto completion and multiple windows. Check out their website to see online demo version.
Demo page and download links are on the same first page.
Chili is the jQuery code highlighter plugin which is very fast highlighting, trivial setup, fully customizable, thoroughly documented and MIT licensed.
Plugin supports several languages like C++, C#, CSS, Delphi, Java, JavaScript, LotusScript, MySQL, PHP, and XHTML and has many configuration options giving you very good control over code appearance.
Check out demo examples and install
Highlight converts source code to formatted text with syntax highlighting:
BeautyOfCode is using Syntaxhighlighter as a base, but this plugin enables xhtml compliant syntax in beautiful way.
JavaScript Syntax Highlighter can be used for client-side syntax highlighting of following languages: html, css, javascript, php, mysql, SQLlite, Apache, PostgreSQL.
Features:
Ultraviolet is a syntax highlighting engine based on Textpow – you must install it to use Ultraviolet first. Since it uses Textmatesyntax files, it offers out of the box syntax highlighting for more than 50 languages and 20 themes. Ultraviolet is at the same time a stand-alone command line utility and a Rubylibrary.
This project is an extensive JavaScript-based syntax highlighting engine, check also why you should choose this engine instead of others.
Download and demo links are all in the same page.
This online tool will syntax highlight JavaScript 1.2. code. The highlighting is based on patterns, it will not test for valid JavaScript. Put your code into the box, and tell it to syntax highlight. It may take a little while to highlight large amounts of code, be patient and let it finish.
The output format is HTML – designed so that you can create a Web page displaying your code. I enjoyed how this tool really displays code in very clean way!
Of course there are also many programs with already built in syntax highlighting support, but these online versions and JS scripts offer bigger control over highlighting and flexibility.
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Thursday, April 12th, 2012 14:31
I use syntax-highlighting on my blog …… thanks for the wonderful share ….
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 03:45
I want to install in blogger this script but not able to install. Can you guide me how to install and configure this code.
Thanks in advance
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 20:35
Thanks for the post. I am going to look into #1 and #6. I have pages on my site that have code so this will come in handy!!!
Monday, January 9th, 2012 07:31
I like Syntax highlighters! Thanks for the info
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 20:55
Anyone know which of these will play nice with velocity?
Saturday, August 20th, 2011 09:31
this is very useful site,……………
thanks for sharing!……….
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 06:21
Thank you for this share.
In the future, I hope that you will share the good information again.
Monday, February 8th, 2010 21:11
good code’s :)
this is thank you.. :)
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 19:02
I miss the http://tools.dottoro.com/services/highlighter/ from the list above.
I definitely find that online code highlighter handy.
It provides easy customization and supports embedded CSS and JavaScript code blocks within HTML documents.
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 16:17
PS: Dainis, I love the design of this website, it’s great, clean and it’s clear you put a lot of effort in making posts like this. Very neat!
Monday, August 31st, 2009 22:14
I always thought these pretty . Javascript… thanks for sharing!
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 00:39
I had previously been using plain textareas. I always thought these pretty highlighted boxes on sites were done server side. Will check a few of these out and use one in future.
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 00:20
Wow, I had no idea there were that many syntax highlighting projects.
When I was looking for one, I found the first one you listed, SyntaxHighlighter, which has worked very well for me. I especially like that the author provides a hosted version of the scripts so you don’t need to figure out where to put them (convenient when using it in Blogger, for example).
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 00:13
Hello Dainis,
These are great resources for coding. I have bookmarked and Stumble this so other can benefit from your list.
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 16:22
Great new design and useful as always.
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 15:15
That is really useful, I’m really bad at coding so this tools are like heaven for me.
Thanks Dainis
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 15:32
Thanks, Luis for your kind and regular comments! Though I like SyntaxHighlighter..and usually I am using Aptana which offers already good highlighting by default:)
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 06:09
Hi Dainis,
Aptana is more to IDE, and the loading speed is pretty slow. If you want a powerful code editor with syntax highlighting feature, you can go for Notepad++.
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 07:27
Ah, i know, but I am enjoying not highlighting there,but helpful error showing and auto completion to {} tags and things like that,for me it is really handy tool and never any other program offered such flexibility.
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Laura
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 00:39
I had previously been using plain textareas. I always thought these pretty highlighted boxes on sites were done server side. Will check a few of these out and use one in future.
sarath
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 00:20
Wow, I had no idea there were that many syntax highlighting projects.
When I was looking for one, I found the first one you listed, SyntaxHighlighter, which has worked very well for me. I especially like that the author provides a hosted version of the scripts so you don’t need to figure out where to put them (convenient when using it in Blogger, for example).
Luis Lopez
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 15:15
That is really useful, I’m really bad at coding so this tools are like heaven for me.
Thanks Dainis
Dainis Graveris
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 15:32
Thanks, Luis for your kind and regular comments! Though I like SyntaxHighlighter..and usually I am using Aptana which offers already good highlighting by default:)
Dicky
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 06:09
Hi Dainis,
Aptana is more to IDE, and the loading speed is pretty slow. If you want a powerful code editor with syntax highlighting feature, you can go for Notepad++.
Dainis Graveris
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 07:27
Ah, i know, but I am enjoying not highlighting there,but helpful error showing and auto completion to {} tags and things like that,for me it is really handy tool and never any other program offered such flexibility.
Phaoloo
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 16:22
Great new design and useful as always.
Dainis Graveris
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 16:25
Thanks man! glad you enjoy!:)
Bunnygotblog
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 00:13
Hello Dainis,
These are great resources for coding. I have bookmarked and Stumble this so other can benefit from your list.
Ajit Choudhary
Monday, August 31st, 2009 22:14
I always thought these pretty . Javascript… thanks for sharing!
Abel Braaksma
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 16:17
PS: Dainis, I love the design of this website, it’s great, clean and it’s clear you put a lot of effort in making posts like this. Very neat!
JorgeM
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 20:35
Thanks for the post. I am going to look into #1 and #6. I have pages on my site that have code so this will come in handy!!!
MWS
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 03:45
I want to install in blogger this script but not able to install. Can you guide me how to install and configure this code.
Thanks in advance
Jonty
Thursday, April 12th, 2012 14:31
I use syntax-highlighting on my blog …… thanks for the wonderful share ….
Ben
Monday, January 9th, 2012 07:31
I like Syntax highlighters! Thanks for the info
Dean
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 20:55
Anyone know which of these will play nice with velocity?
tom
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 19:02
I miss the http://tools.dottoro.com/services/highlighter/ from the list above.
I definitely find that online code highlighter handy.
It provides easy customization and supports embedded CSS and JavaScript code blocks within HTML documents.
Duvvar Design
Monday, February 8th, 2010 21:11
good code’s :)
this is thank you.. :)
function
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 06:21
Thank you for this share.
In the future, I hope that you will share the good information again.
Balmiki Kumar
Saturday, August 20th, 2011 09:31
this is very useful site,……………
thanks for sharing!……….