How do I change the main data entry highlight color in CC2018?

[digidandan]

I am using CC2018. I have chosen the color theme "Light". All colors throughout are fine and the way I like them while writing code EXCEPT in one place. When I go to the DW interface itself to set up a new site, for example...SITE >NEW SITE>, the data entry field highlight color is so light that I am having trouble seeing what I am highlighting. Can I change just this one color to a darker color. I know I can customize a theme, but it is way over my head finding what to change and how. I have gotten as far as being able to copy the "Light" theme and make a "new editable" theme from it, but don't know where or what to change to make this one color darker. Any help would be appreciated. I have attached a sample where the "site name" field is highlighted in the default color.

Thanks

[Jon Fritz · Accepted solution]

That highlight color is controlled at the OS level.

There might be somewhere in a program file to change the background color of the text field, to off-set the highlight color given by the OS, but I wouldn't know where to start looking.

To change the highlight in Windows7, you need to go into Personalize > Window Color > Advanced Appearance Settings > Item > Selected Items and choose a new color.

I'm not sure where it would be in Mac, or other versions of Windows though.

[digidandan]

As I change themes, I guess the highlight color does stay the same, it is just the "Light" theme is too close in color. I may have to change themes. I am using a MAC, OS Sierra

[Jon Fritz]

It's pretty easy to change on Mac too (on the bottom of the page)...

macOS Sierra: Give your desktop a custom look

[digidandan]

With that said, adjusting my MAC did help a little, but I really was happy with the default settings for everything else I did on the MAC, so I changed the MAC back to the default and just used a light setting in the DW preferences.

However, I really would like to customize  a theme to better fit how I want to see my code. When I go to "edit" on my new custom theme it is total Greek to me. I don't understand anything in that file, as in where to find what I want to change. Is there a cheat sheet or instructions on how to make these changes. For instance, changing the comment colors? Maybe making the over-all font size a little bigger?

Thanks,

Dan

[Jon Fritz]

Unfortunately, there isn't much out there yet in the way of documentation from Adobe.

DW only recently changed to the partial implementation of the Brackets code engine. So some items that do work in Brackets (which you can find better documentation for online) don't necessarily function in DW.

Here's Adobe's official page: Learn how you can customize the colors of your code elements in Dreamweaver.

It does require some coding knowledge, unlike CC2015 and earlier where everything was built into the Preferences interface.

[digidandan]

I went to the link in the main.less file and it is way over my head, however I tried to change the code for the comments and it did nothing. I think I may just have to leave it alone until there is better documentation for us unfamiliar with this.

I realized I forgot to go back and reselect the new them in preferences after the edit. It worked.

[Kratika Agarwal]

Hi,

Please see below thread if it helps Re: Dreamweaver CS6 coding colors in CC 2018...

Tag bracket code colors

Thanks

[digidandan]

I found a little trick to find what is what in the main.less code that is provided. I had no idea what each line meant and where to look for what I wanted to change.

I took a small screen shot of the color that is currently being shown in code view. Then go to Photoshop or other color editor and select the color in that program to find out what the actual hex code color is. (#______). Go back to your main.less file in DW and do a "find" for that color. There it is! I changed a few colors this way.

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

You can use the Token Inspector to know the selectors in main.less file to which code elements they pertain. Like for example, if we talk about comments then we use .cm-comment for it.

Please follow the steps below-

1.Open the Token Inspector using Google Chrome.

2. open any of your html/css/js/php files which has the code elements for which you want to change color

3. now click on the line where the code element is- in your case line where a comment is

4. You will see a red box blinking on the right side showing the selector

5. You can now go back to your main.less file and search for this selector and then set the color of this selector to whatecer you think is fine.

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[digidandan]

I was unable to figure out how to use the Token Inspector link. It opens up a page in my Safari (which is the browser I am using to access this forum and takes me to CodeMirror: Token inspector Demo ) and nothing happen when I click on the sampled text to the left or right sides. What am I supposed to do next? Is it a program I need to download? Something I access in Chrome? Do I copy the text in my CSS file and paste it somewhere? Sorry for being dense, but I don't know where to begin with your above method.

Thanks,

[Niharika_Jha]

Hi,

I have created a sample video to assist you with this. Please watch it, to give you some context- I want to see the color coding for php files in codeview so I copy the some sample php code on to the text area of Token Inspector, then I change the mode to foo.php to see the color coding. Then I simply click on the tokens to get there token ID.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Niharika Gupta

Adobe Dreamweaver

[digidandan]

Thanks for the effort, however I can't open your file on a MAC. It is an exec file. I think I figured it out as I had not been changing the file mode on the bottom.