Code Editors

Up until now I have used a combination of Notepad and Vi to edit and/or create any web pages. However I am now starting to work on things that are a little more ambitious and all the code gets a little confusing. So I was wondering what editors people have used, and what would rate well. Ideally something cross platform, but if that isn't possible I use windows more than Linux.


Any advice or input will be gratefully received.

KompoZer is cross platform and you can' beat the price..

are you talking straight HTML - or a scripting language?

for PHP - I have been using netbeans IDE

I was talking about a scripting language.

Currently PHP, but I also want to learn Javascript.

well for managing PHP - Javabean IDE seems reasonable (though I haven't managed to pursuade it to allow script directories below server root which restricts peoples ability to see code )

Eclipse and Netbeans are widely-used IDEs that are useful for creating scripted websites. Eclipse tends to lead Netbeans in functionality. You should also look at Aptana Studio which is built on top of Eclipse. I mostly use Aptana.

eclipse tends to be painfully slow (might be the works PC & java applications though)

Agreed. Eclipse can be slow if you are doing Java (not Javascript) development. The OP should also look at Nvu, which is highly regarded by many people.

Nvu used to have problems with uploading to FTP, multiple connections used to time out on certain FTP servers and there was no way of changing the amount of connections opened in the program. That was a year or two back, so they may have fixed it by now. Apart from that, nvu is a very good app for the price!

Could never get on with netbeans or eclipse, always prefered editing in DW/notepad and testing online, was just quicker. Will give aptana a try though, not heard of it before, ty.

I have happily used Buefish in the past when writing PHP scripts.

Bluefish isn't bad. There is also Quanta Plus (you'd need KDE installed for that). I always use the Kate Editor because that one has at least a Find-in-Files function. I have yet to see an editor which would include a decent Find/Replace-in-Files function, most editors don't have it, or only limit it to cumbersome IDE-specific project setups.

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-May-09 20:14:08)

Unfortunately nothing comes close to Dreamweaver. The only thing stopping a complete transfer from Windows to Linux!

Dreamweaver isn't the sort of thing I'm looking for though. I wish to write the code myself. I just want a program, able to store what I write as text, without any additional formatting, but that will lay out the code on the screen so that I can read it more easily. This is about learning how the code works, and what I can do with it. I do not want a web publisher as such.

If all you want is an intelligent text editor, you should take a look at SciTE

Post deleted by billford

I tend to write most of my stuff in the code section of Dreamweaver, but it is very useful to be able to do things in the wysiwyg and look at the produced code.

Also Dreamweaver makes dynamic sites a little easier to set up, and helps with CSS.

I use aEdix. It does a pretty good job for coding. It does highlighting for different languages and I could not do without it.

In reply to a post by ukwiz:

I tend to write most of my stuff in the code section of Dreamweaver, but it is very useful to be able to do things in the wysiwyg and look at the produced code.

Also Dreamweaver makes dynamic sites a little easier to set up, and helps with CSS.

I use dreamweaver plus style master for the css ..

Notepad++ or EditPlus are both good options from my experience!

Notepad2 > all

It's basically notepad with tag colouring. Win win

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Post deleted by MrSaffron

In reply to a post by carol189:

Same here, i also use dream-viewer.

In reply to a post by johnbrady01:

I use dreamviewer

Both of these are spammy.

I use Dreamweaver and expression web and I eat corned beef not spam.

Post deleted by MrSaffron