Developers lack flexible color highlighting across text formats
Developers and technical writers want color to make text structure or meaning easier to see: nested HTML tags, parser-labeled spans, and selected text in Markdown or diagrams. Current options are specific to particular editors or formats; one request describes HTML extensions as flawed and unattractive, while Markdown users point to a lack of native colored highlighting. A focused editor extension could address several of these needs, though diagram-editor formatting is a less natural fit.
For developers and technical writers. Mentioned from Apr 2020 to Jun 2026 on GitHub, Hacker News and Stack Exchange.
4 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 4.0/10
- Pain
- 5.0/10
- Frequency
- 5.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Professionals
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
However, I still miss colorization in HTML files and templates. There are some extensions, but these have the same shortcomings as the (now replaced) Rainbow Brackets 2 extension, as well as quite “ugly” rendering
I frequently find myself loading and parsing text files. Debugging a parser sometimes gets a little complex. I was wondering if there was some gui or part of some editor that does highlighting
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 1 product idea with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 4 places to find your first customers
- 2 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks