Source Code Editors

[Anacrusis]

What do you use to write code for your site? I while ago I found this excellant program called Source Edit. It's got to be one of the best editors out there IMO. And it's free too! What do you guys use?

[TCH-JimE]

I use proberley the cheapest and best source code editor around, notepad.

 

Ok is simple, its plain but boy is it useful!

 

Jim

[TCH-Don]

I love mine from notetab.com

Its html friendly and has a favorite tab like a browser. You can priview to two different browsers.

 

And unlike many others, as you save, it still retains the changes as long as you keep it open. So you can make changes, save, ftp or preview, look and then undo all the way back to when you opened it.

 

It also has html and css libraries to make it easy to add tags. You still have to know what to add, but its easier than typing it all.

There are three versions, free, $10

and $20 for the pro version with spell checker that knows html commands.

[borfast]

I use Bluefish, which is a bit like notepad (very very simple) but has syntax highlighting for a lot of programming languages

 

http://bluefish.openoffice.nl

 

PS - No, this has nothing to do with openoffice.org

[Guest schussat]

I use Bluefish, which is a bit like notepad (very very simple) but has syntax highlighting for a lot of programming languages

Hey, I really like Bluefish, too. I haven't used it for a good long time, though -- since setting up my MT blog, I haven't had many occasions to directly edit much HTML. I should, of course, set up my templates to use external files, in which case I'd have plenty of HTML to edit outside of the MT interface, but I have yet to do that.

 

For my own text editing (lots and lots of LaTeX these days), I'm deep into emacs now. It's a little steep for simple HTML, I think, but it's a great tool now that I have the hang of it.

 

-Alan

[rayners]

For my own text editing (lots and lots of LaTeX these days), I'm deep into emacs now. It's a little steep for simple HTML, I think, but it's a great tool now that I have the hang of it.

Emacs? Bah! I used that for a long time. Then I tried vim. I haven't gone back since.

[Guest schussat]

Emacs?  Bah!  I used that for a long time.  Then I tried vim.  I haven't gone back since.

Never used it much, but your comment prompted me to check it out -- pretty cool. And loads up fast. I tested out a couple of quick LaTeX packages, too, and they seem very, very nice. I just might have to keep exploring.

 

(By the way: Not being a power MT user, I'm not heavily into plugins, but I really appreciate your plugin manager. Thanks!)

 

-Alan

[vendlus]

I use editplus.

[Frylock]

I still like using Crimson Editor. Pretty simple, the way it should be, but still very useful. www.crimsoneditor.com

[shakes]

I use (and have for many years) Homesite. Formerly by Allaire, then Macromedia bought it and burried it. It's still a great program but they've stopped development of it.

 

from what I understand you can still get it if you buy that 'web-authoring-for-dummies' preogram dreamweaver.

[Deverill]

Actually, Shakes, you can buy Homesite 5.5 from the Macromedia website for $99.00 It is included in DW for free but that's not the only way to get it.

 

It's too bad you feel DW is "web-authoring-for-dummies" because some of the best websites ever were created with it and I doubt that reflects negatively on the developers. It really is a powerful tool that has its place in web development, although I will admit it's not for everyone.

[DarqFlare]

I am also an EditPlus user!

[aaron_ginn]

XEmacs. What else is there?

[shakes]

It's too bad you feel DW is "web-authoring-for-dummies" because some of the best websites ever were created with it and I doubt that reflects negatively on the developers.

perhaps i was a bit harsh ... I have problems with any wysiwyg editor as they don't encourage people to understand the code and keep their code clean. I also had issues using dw (i tried once because a friend swore it was awesome) and i had issues because all of my pages are static and consist of many includes.

 

then again maybe I just didn't spend enough time tinkering to set it up properly.

 

either way to me it's just better if you hack at the source and really understand what's going on.

 

i'll cut dw some slack though becuase from what I saw of it, it did look pretty darn powerful (i'll never give front page any credit tho)

[TCH-Rob]

EditPlus here as well.

[stevevan]

Depending upon the platform I'm using at the time:

 

Linux - Bluefish

Windoze - Homesite 5

[criosa]

Currently I use Dreamweaver.

 

I started out with a crappy WYSIWYG, hand-coded in Notepad for awhile, used Netscape for awhile for it's easy table making (and then went and fixed the nastyness it created in Notepad), occasionally used Adobe something or other when I was first learning frames, found EditPlus and used that for awhile, and ended up at Dreamweaver. I still know the basics though - I'm just lazy right now!

[xGrendel]

I generally like to keep it very simple, but it depends where I'm doing work:

 

Home:

• Maguma - my first choice to turn to for PHP editing, also works well for HTML
  
• Notepad - it's a classic for editing on-the-fly
  
• Dreamweaver - I use on rare occasion
  
• Frontpage 2002 - Again, I use it rarely but use to use it more often for handcoding/previewing as well as editing things I did at work.
  
• Bluefish - I dual-boot so I will use bluefish, which is a very powerful and useful editor, one of my favs.
  

Work:

• Notepad - again, you will notice the old standby making an appearance
  
• Frontpage - Used when I want to lay out a quick form, preview it and blast an email out to my reps.
  

Since I have worked in tech support, helping with web design, I can share the viewpoint of the downside to WYSIWYG editors. In fact, I had some guy screaming at me because he could did not know how to paste one of our HTML buttons into his site. The best line is when he lashed out saying "I'm a ####ing web designer, I don't know how to do this coding ####. Can't you just do it for me!" What was sad is that the guy actually did design a beautiful site, just had no clue on how it functioned on the backside. It's like someone who knows how to take a dump, just doesn't understand how to eat.

 

Then you have the people who use Frontpage. I use it just because it works well for me to whip out HTML email forms and such as I have several templates set up. It really sucks when you have to tell someone how to paste code into their site, only to see that they paste it into the layout view so it appears as code on the displayed page. Most have no clue that there are multiple views that can be used.

 

Then again, that is what you end up with with a WYSIWYG editor: people who never make it past, or care to look beyond what the full package offers. You end up with a bunch of wanna-be developers/entrepraneurs who have no concept of what drives the displayed page.

 

I didn't mean to hijack the thread with my venting, just got a bit off the topic

[jandafields]

I use TextPad. It's free.

 

A big plus over notepad is that it understands Linux formatted text, where as notepad smashes all the lines together and shows strange boxes.

 

TextPad has downloadable syntax highlighting as well.

[kaseytraeger]

Another TextPad user here. In fact, I liked it so much that I went ahead and forked over the $29 to purchase a full license for the product (versus the freeware license).

 

If anyone's interested in checking it out, you can read more about TextPad at their website -- http://www.textpad.com.

[snipe]

PC: Editplus (woo!)

Mac: BBedit

*nix: vim

[voilsb]

Win32:

• Editpad Lite, but I'm thinking about switching to something with syntax highlighting (Editpad Pro has it, but not the free Lite version)
  

Linux:

• Emacs, mostly
  
• Pico
  
• Vim
  

[Bunni]

I'm still using HomeSite 4.0. Started out with v3 and never saw any need to change after 4. I taught myself to code with Notepad and a Dummies book so I don't even use the wizards. I still have much to learn but I don't want a program that does it all for me. I want to learn as I go.

[TCH-Bruce]

I use vi on *nix and viw on Windows. I also use HTML-kit.

[LisaJill]

I started out a long time ago using Dreamweaver. Now I use Notepad. I have used VI in the past and have a windows version until I have a moment to install a dual boot to Linux.

 

I do most of my editing through movabletype's templates screen so being able to read through the code sans highlighting has helped immensely. I use EditPlus if I ever need to find specific line numbers; or I just pipe the page through the w3c validator since it also outputs line numbers.

Edited April 6, 2004 by TCH-Lisa

[Rennemo]

...some of the best websites ever were created with it...

Where did you get that from?

 

DW is great, I use it for html/php stuff and I use textpad for php only.

[scotttyz]

1ST Page 2000 from Evrsoft, syntex highlighting, free and has good preview mode

 

http://www.evrsoft.com

[kevan_j]

I use CoffeeCup HTML Editor. It is a text based editor, with a preview function, so you can see what your page will look like before you post it to a server. No WSYISYG design features though. It includes lots of CGI, DHTML, JavaScripts, etc, and has some cool built in uploading functions (right-click on a page in a displayed list to upload it pre-configured ftp server locations. You can preconfigure them to the directory level on your server). Has the ability to create and store code snippets so if you have an item you use on every page, you can just grab it from your library. They produce a lot of other tools for creating web site features too.

 

Hope I'm not violating anything here, but they are at www.coffeecup.com.

 

They also run a rival web-hosting enterprise, but notice that I am HERE and not THERE. I WAS there, but switched to TCH coz IMHO their webhosting definitely DOESN'T ROCK

[Prel]

I'm uses notepad for fast things and Dreamweaver for others.

 

 

Paulo

[Billy]

I've always wanted a good text editor with integrated FTP for Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that besides BBEdit, which, in my opinion, is horribly buggy. HTML-kit for PC's has superbly integrated ftp capabilities, and it's free.

 

Mac: BBEdit (boo)

PC: HTML-kit

[cajunman4life]

I'm in agreement with kevan_j. CoffeeCup HTML Editor is one of the best I've ever worked with. Granted, it cost $49, but you get free upgrades for life, even at the end of the month when they release a new version and up the price by about $20. As for their hosting? Err... well... I'm here aren't I? lol.

[oompahloompah]

Any source code editor which supports highlighting, regexp and diff as some of its main features has got to be my fave. That's one of the reason why I like Emacs or its variant XEmacs - although its humongous amount of keyboard shortcuts will probably drive one up the wall initially.

 

As for GUI-based, Editplus is definitely one heck of an editor.

[jandafields]

Happy Birthday!!! This thread is exactly 1 year old today!!!

 

[TCH-Don]

LOL happy birthday thread

 

its been a good thread, lots of good editors suggested.

[rnmcd]

Doesn't MS Wordpad add unwanted lines of code when you open a text file with it?

 

I thought I had a problem with this when I was trying to install phpmyadmin.

[paultwang]

Doesn't MS Wordpad add unwanted lines of code when you open a text file with it?

 

I thought I had a problem with this when I was trying to install phpmyadmin.

No. It does not add anything to an ANSI plaintext file provided that you open the text file and save it without changing the file format. If there is any problem, it is the line feed format. It always saves your documents into CR LF (Windows) formatting. This might be a problem for some *nix programs because they do not support CR LF format. However, if your FTP program can convert the text files to *nix formats during upload, you should not have any problem at all.

[rnmcd]

Doesn't MS Wordpad add unwanted lines of code when you open a text file with it?

 

I thought I had a problem with this when I was trying to install phpmyadmin.

No. It does not add anything to an ANSI plaintext file provided that you open the text file and save it without changing the file format. If there is any problem, it is the line feed format. It always saves your documents into CR LF (Windows) formatting. This might be a problem for some *nix programs because they do not support CR LF format. However, if your FTP program can convert the text files to *nix formats during upload, you should not have any problem at all.

I have read several posts on this site that say don't use Notepad or MS Word. But they recommend MS Wordpad.

 

I know I had tons of trouble when I tried to install myphpadmin using Wordpad. It added all kinds of line breaks/spaces/or some code that hampered the installation.

 

Here are a couple of sites that say don't use MS Wordpad:

 

http://help.powweb.com/tutorials/my...min/install.php

 

http://flash-for-nuke.de/modules.ph...nuke-files.html

 

 

Thanks.

[TCH-Bruce]

I have read several posts on this site that say don't use Notepad or MS Word. But they recommend MS Wordpad.

Hmm, I would never use Wordpad over Notepad to edit a text file unless I was on Windows 98 and had no other text editor available to me.

 

There are numerous html/php text editors available both free and not free that you can download and use if you don't want to use Notepad.

 

I prefer using HTML-kit since it highlights tags and programming code. But there are a host of others out there.

 

Check out www.snapfiles.com for different types of editors. I'm sure you will find something you like.

[egeller624]

I've used HTML-Kit religiously for about a year and a half now. I prefer hand-coding to the WYSIWYG editors out there (FrontPage gives me headaches lol) just because I like to have completely control over my code. This tool makes it so easy to write in any language (HTML, javascript, PHP, MySql, CSS, etc) and there are a ton of free plug-ins you can add on if you're looking for something specific.

 

Best of all, the tool is free!

 

Unfortunately I'm forced to use Dreamweaver at work, but I'm trying to convince the other programmers to use HTML-Kit instead lmao.

[ztrauq]

Taco HTML Edit - it's tasty, and works in OSX! For scripting, I use that, or occasionally Rixstep's Rixedit for basic editing.

[TOWebstress]

I think it's unfair to trash DW so wantonly...just because someone uses it certainly doesn't imply that they don't understand the back end of their site.

 

IMHO, DW would be very difficult to master without an understanding of the code. I know HTML like the back of my hand, but usually use DW just to save time. It ensures I close my tags, and don't put silly typos in. And if I do, it makes them apparent to me. Admittedly, I probably spend about half my DW time in code-view making adjustments right to the code, which is why I say it would be tough for someone who doesn't know the code to really master DW.

 

I started out on Notepad, then went to HomeSite and eventually ended up with DW as Macromedia has pretty well incorporated the best of HomeSite into DW MX2004.

 

For really quick changes, I still pop Notepad open because it's fastest.

[carbonize]

I use PS Pad. Think of Ultraedit but FREE and with a decent FTP client built in. Syntax hilighting for a plethora of languages, function/tag complete, code snippets. Also it does not need installing. I keep a copy on my USB stick so I can work on my scripts when in work.

[_root.dan]

For html I use a version of HTMLed which I think you can download free. For Java, there's NetBeans or Processing (Processing is easier). For BASIC Microsoft QuickBASIC is good.

[cajunman4life]

As an update to my earlier post about CoffeeCup HTML Editor, kevan_j said it doesn't have WYSIWYG features. While that was true of the old version, it isn't true anymore. While I don't use WYSIWYG editors, I know some people do. I mainly use CoffeeCup for the plain editing. I originally bought it for all the scripts it includes with it, and it even has a flash banner generator built right in. It's worth checking out, and is available as a free trial download.

 

But then again, that's about the only software I've ever paid for... so if you're looking for free, I (personally) use wordpad because it handles UNIX-like line breaks better than notepad does (doesn't display that annoying "box" character on Windows).

[marie b.]

I use Coffeecup HTML Editor to edit lists in batch - going through each line one by one is an almighty pain, and the Find / Replace tool is invaluable.

 

(I know a lot of things have this but I used Coffeecup way back when, so I stuck with it.)

 

I use Notepad for everything else.

[carbonize]

I use PSPad as it can run from my USB stick. built in FTP client, syntax highlightinh, auto completion, support fror Unix, Mac and windows line breaks, HTML tidy and a lot more.

[cajunman4life]

I use Coffeecup HTML Editor to edit lists in batch - going through each line one by one is an almighty pain, and the Find / Replace tool is invaluable.

 

(I know a lot of things have this but I used Coffeecup way back when, so I stuck with it.)

 

I use Notepad for everything else.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm like you, I've been using CoffeeCup for a few years now... and since you get lifetime updates I see no reason to pay for anything else (but I do use note/wordpad more often it seems).

[thejerm]

I lik editpad lite (I am too cheap for pro).

[abinidi]

Here's another vote for TextPad (www.textpad.com). I love the tabbed windows, and the ability to do a find/replace through any number of open files.

 

Don't know what I'd do without TextPad (I'm also a registered user. $29 of the best dollars I ever spent).

[D.Slatk]

I use PHP Designer 2005. Very small, but it has lots of features built into it, which is good since I'm not on the best computer. It's mainly for web editing, this means it doesn't do much for non-web languages. It has many features for PHP, including integration with the php manual and a debugging panel. And it's completely free...

 

It can do syntax highlighting that you can customize the colors of on PHP, HTML, CSS, XML, Perl, Javasript, VB, Java, C#, almost every SQL program you can think of (lol)... And then my favorite part. It can highlight several scripting languages in the same page. Some of the pages I edit use html, css, php, and maybe a little bit of java and php editor can highlight each separately within the same file.

 

http://www.mpsoftware.dk/phpdesigner.php If you want to try it.

[carbonize]

I tried PHP Designer once as well as their HTML program. They both felt unfinished to me. I still recommend PSPad as the best text editor out there with tabs, syntax highlighting, auto complete, FTP client etc etc.

[TCH-Don]

I am going to have to second PSPad

I just switched from my old standby because it did not understand php.

[D.Slatk]

I think a lot of it depends on the user's taste and what you're using it for. I use pspad when I'm not on my desktop because you can just put it in a memory stick and have a nice editor right there. In php designer, everything I would need and use is there so it really doesn't feel incomplete to me.

Edited August 8, 2005 by D.Slatk

[perfectdreams]

IMHO, DW would be very difficult to master without an understanding of the code. I know HTML like the back of my hand, but usually use DW just to save time. It ensures I close my tags, and don't put silly typos in.

 

I'm the same way with FrontPage 2002. I use it for quick updating. I know the ins and outs of designing and maintaining a site, and I much prefer using something that's fast and easy, than having to spend hours on end updating my site, . I've also got DW, but can't figure it out (I'm a Office person, so another layout/design kinda weirds me out and confuses the heck out of me).