Your Mac OS X Text Editor of Choice?
Hicks and Croft have recently mentioned it, but I'd like to hear CB's response on it... Which text editor do you find yourself using most often?
I've been using TextWrangler for a few months, but realize now that compared to other editors it offers nothing. Without code-hinting, any auto-filling, and no snippits, it doesn't really offer anything for coding webpages that Window's Notepad doesn't ;).
Currently, I'm on my 5th day of the skEdit demo, and I must say I'm impressed. Simple, low-bloat, powerful, code-hinting, auto complete, snippits, color blender...
Anyways, I was just looking for a few more suggestions before I make my decision and let the company I work for know which one to purchase.
User login
Navigation
Latest critique
Active forum topics
BBEdit and CSSEdit
I use BBEdit for all my hand coding needs except for when doing external CSS when I use CSSEdit. Not sure if it's the best necessarily but I have not found anything better so far and I have probably tried them all (SubEthaEdit, Taco, HyperEdit, StyleMaster) None came up to scratch.
Personally I don't think any Mac web designer can be without BBEdit. TextWrangler is a great free product but lack most of the features you need for day to day coding.
----------------------
http://mijlee.com
----------------------
BBEdit, emacs and vim
I use BBEdit too but since I do a lot of work on ssh sessions I have taken a liking to emacs and vim. They both have syntax highlighting and auto-complete and they are free. So, I'd say emacs is still winning for me and its available for Mac, Windows, Unix or Linux.
I prefer emacs cause I sometimes can't be bothered to wait for BBEdit to startup and I am also very bad at upgrading software so I kinda find the 'updates available' dialog a bit annoying.
SubEthaEdit and Smultron
I've been using SubEthaEdit for a little while now but before that it was Smultron which is OSS and great for multiple documents:
http://smultron.sourceforge.net/
Using Textwrangler at the
Using Textwrangler at the moment, but I really need to try out some editors with more sophisticated features. Thanks for the recommendation.
DreamweaverMX2004
It does what I want and it's what I know. I'm going to try BBEdit and skEdit on my next site though. Am I missing out greatly on something by using DW and not these other apps?
Good but not great
The first thing is that personally I think DW is a good app just not a great one. But the issues are a big pain in the jaxy.
The WYSIWYG interface is rubbish at presenting valid CSS layout
Buggy on the Mac (if it crashes in site mode once more I might swap to GoLive)
It could make PHP dev much easier
Really processor intensive on the Mac
I will always develop in BBEdit and then manage sites in DW, I think this is the only way to use it personally. In the old days when sites were built in tables DW was a god send but unless the new version has a new WYSIWYG engine with standards compliant CSS rendering you just can't use to develop modern HTML.
----------------------
http://mijlee.com
----------------------
Yea, I know DW does have a...
Yea, I know DW does have a terrible rendering of css layouts. Everything I do is completely in css and I pretty much don't use the design view because everything's all haywire. Plus, I personally have greater control when I hand code. I might use it to click on an image and add a quick link or some alt text or something though.
I just havent really heard any major reasons, after reading all these various blog entries around the web, as to why I should stop using DW and use something else. I'm not in it for a nice WYSIWYG editor and it sounds like DW does everything all the other smaller editors do.
Thanks for the info!
I use DW too for similar
I use DW too for similar reasons.
DW8 has some awesome awesome advances that it should have had a while ago, but they're finally here. I'm LOVING the whole open and close view of div layers and other blocks of html. Its very useful I find when you're dealing with big pages that have embedded jscripts and stuff like that, lets me hide all the junk and focus on whats important at the time.
I also end up having to convert a lot of Office documents into valid clean code that MS products don't seem to care about. DW's "fix Word html" feature can kick some serous butt.
- Jeff Yamada
www.suborior.com
hmmm...
I learned to code using Simpletext (if you still remember that app) but when Dreamweaver came out I tried it and hated the fact that I has less control over the layout of the page and still had to go into the code view to refine the page. So, in the end I gave up and have never gone back to Dreamweaver since ;)
I'm sure its matured since then but i guess I'm a bit of a purist and still like hands-on coding.
Oh, I learned way back in
Oh, I learned way back in the day in simpletext too, but there are features I find that simply save me time.
When I have a deadline in one hour, Its sooo much faster to use some of the cooler tools to blast through things.
Though most decent apps have this, Its another thing I can't live without:
Search and replace over open documents...very useful if you need to change soemthing that is in many pages. Dunno if simpletext or whatever you use has this, but it rocks.
Being able to program your own config files or tweak them is also dope.
I was once using a server that actually parsed html files as aspx files, it was a snap to change dreamweaver's settings in its xml config file for document types to mark my html as if it were asp.net...pretty dope.
- Jeff Yamada
www.suborior.com
The new Dreamweaver 8 has
The new Dreamweaver 8 has MUCH better CSS rendering and editing capabilities. Still not perfect, but definitely usable.
Arvana
arvanadesign.com
Yeah, about freakin time:)
Yeah, about freakin time:) I'm stoked.
- Jeff Yamada
www.suborior.com
Sadly I still develop using
Sadly I still develop using tables, so I use DW as my main editor. Then when the site's done I refine all my code, (html, php, css, and frames) using BBedit. I find it works great for me now. We'll see how things change once I start learning CSS.
- JoshuaTree
Using text wrangler
I use text wrangler. Mostly because its free!
But I don't code that much either.
Design is all around us.
check out http://www.createsdesign.com
What's so annoying...
...with all text editors I tried so far is that I haven't found one yet that doesn't add some platform specific code.
My problem is that I sometimes edit a html file on a Windows PC and the other time on a MacOSX PowerBook. When I open the files in Windows again there are always strange control codes visible (e.g. black boxes). Line feeds have disappeared and sometimes a webpage doesn't work until I search and replace those "Apple crap" Sorry but it only happens when I go from Apple back to the PC. PC to Apple works fine.
I've tried some free editors now, including TextWrangler. Is there one that only "knows" and stores hard line breaks in the file? That works guaranteed on both platforms? A pure and simple one like the editor that comes free with Windows?
Save as Windows
I think both Textwrangler and BBEdit are able to save as DOS files (as well as Unix should you need). This converts the files line endings to the relevant format and obviously reads them back properly as well.
It is actually good practice to do this with files that sit on a Windows server as certain formatting can be messed up (lists for example) in IE if they have Mac line endings.
----------------------
http://mijlee.com
----------------------
Thank you!
That's a simple solution of my problem. Yes I can set the preferences to DOS/Windows in TextWrangler (It was set to UNIX by the way :-)
Thanks a lot.
TextMate
I tried Smultron, SubEthaEdit, BBEdit, etc. but I definitely adopt TextMate. Absolutely great for macros, snippets and auto-complete commands.
For CSS, my preference goes to CSSEdit
I dig using Transmit's
I dig using Transmit's "edit" feature for quick changes.
- Jeff Yamada
www.suborior.com
Freeware!
I usually use freeware solutions since I hate begging our accounting department for money ;) So I use Taco HTML for xhtml/xml editing and JEdit (even though I dislike java programs as they tend to use a lot of memory). I really like Taco's balance tag command which reformats and indents your text. It also shows how your html renders within the program (sort of like subethaedits preview but better).
I'm trying to use TextWrangler but I can't really find a good use for it.
For me...
It's skEdit all the way. Superb wee tool, and incredibly handy. Love the way PHP function explanations are built-in. As for CSS, I use CSSEdit by MacRabbit (http://www.macrabbit.com/cssedit/) which is another cracking wee tool.
Since I switched to Mac full time, I've been amazed at the wealth of superb-looking, incredibly useful, cheap software!! And to think I spent all those years (and pounds!!) on Dreamweaver...