1) to show only a part of a string, use the substr() function.
the substr() function takes 3 arguments:
the string
starting character
ending character
to show the first 11 characters of a string use:
<?php echo substr($row_RSName['ColumnName'], 0, 12); ?>
2) I will add a feature request for adding search string highlighting to DataAssist search. For now though, you would need to hand code this. I was able to find a number of examples of how to accomplish this using javascript through google:
search?q=javascript+highlight+search+text&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a