Disable Syntax Highlighting in WordPress 2.8

I was initially excited about the CodePress syntax highlighting in WordPress 2.8, although after actually using it recently, I changed my mind. While just the syntax highlighting alone is not a problem, the way it completes quotes, and auto indents makes it somewhat annoying to say the least.

I asked on Twitter, and found a thread on the WordPress.org support forums, but unfortunately couldn’t find a solution on either. It turns out the solution was actually a lot simpler than I thought. Watch this quick video to see how to disable it:

As a quick outline, here’s what you have to do:

• Login to your WordPress 2.8 admin panel
• Navigate to either the theme or plugin editor (doesn’t matter which)
• Click the “Screen Options” tab located in the top right corner
• Then click the “Disable syntax highlighting” link

To enable it again, follow the same steps and click the “Enable syntax highlighting’ link instead. Another method of disabling/enabling is to append ?codepress=off or ?codepress=on to the end of the Theme Editor URL.

Hat tip to Eric Sizemore (as mentioned in the video) for pointing this out to me.