What's the best text editor actually?

[Dream]

I'm thinking about dumping my 7 year old Homesite.

What do you guys recommend for coding?

Something that would close html tags for me, have actual languages highlighting, having the same color highlighting as Homesite is a plus.

Can be paid software, up to 50 bucks, and not heavy on resources.

[Chroder]

On Windows I used to like EditPlus the best. Notepad++ was good, too.

On the Mac I love TextMate -- best text editor ever :D

[Dream]

I downloaded EditPlus, does it close html tags?

edit: all this pink highlighting in editplus is gay :D

[Floris]

I agree, TextMate for the Mac!

[Scott MacVicar]

Komodo Edit is worth a try, http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/

It's the baby version of the full IDE but does most of the features that you need, runs on Linux, OS X and Windows.

[simsim]

I use EditPlus2 & I'm quite happy with it. Syntax highlighting colors could be changed easily.

I also use UltraEdit32, but for some reason I'm not so comfortable with it.

[MrNase]

TextMate for Mac. :o

[mlx]

Hehe, I'm still using Homesite as well and I have to say it's a shame that it was bought off the market by Macromedia. They were of course never interested to develop a source code editor like Homesite. They just needed some of its features for Dreamweaver I guess (and Dreamweaver is useless for my needs).

Anyway I've tried some other more up2date editors like UltraEdit32 but something always made me come back using Homesite 5.5 for PHP coding.

So let me know if you find an editor that you actually prefer compared to Homesite ;)

P.S. that Komodo Edit looks interesting, I'll check it out :)

[simsim]

I guess Kier is still using Homesite too. :)

[Wayne Luke]

Best is always subjective. I would say that try a large group of them and decide what works best for you.

I have Textpad 5.0 (http://www.textpad.com/) and Homesite 5.5 installed on my computer. For CSS, I usually use Topstyle Pro 3 (http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/TopStyle/). I have my computer set up so that Textpad completely replaces Notepad so I don't have to worry about file associations and get the advanced features of a true text editor. Only issue I have with it is that it doesn't have FTP built-in but since I can call external programs from within it such as compilers, browsers, and FTP clients it isn't a big deal.

[JakeS]

I prefer win32pad, been using it since it came out :), All my coding I do, such as creating websites etc are doing using this.

[KeithMcL]

I use and like HTML-Kit (http://www.htmlkit.com/)

[mlucek]

I've been using UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com)for many years and have been very satisfied with it. I'm a software programmer by profession (C++/C/PHP), so need a powerful editor, do small websites on the side (vb/html/php/etc) and UltraEdit works great for all of that.

I pretty much keep UltraEdit open on my desktop/laptop 24/7 !!

[Quillz]

Notepad2

[MRGTB]

Are there any text editors out there that show a webpage display of the coding as you do it. So you can see as you code how it will look online

[Andy Huang]

I use EmEditor (http://www.emeditor.com/) because of character encoding and other neat features.

[BassX]

E Text Editor (http://www.e-texteditor.com/) for Windows is promising.

It's still in beta and it's feature set is still a work in progress. It's looking to be a clone of TextMate for Windows - the developer is working with TextMate's developer to make it work with TextMate's bundles, etc.

[Quillz]

Are there any text editors out there that show a webpage display of the coding as you do it. So you can see as you code how it will look online
I think any rich-text editor will do this, so try Dreamweaver, FrontPage or Nvu.

[Vile]

Another vote for TextPad :)

[simsim]

I use EmEditor (http://www.emeditor.com/) because of character encoding and other neat features.
What character encoding features that this editor provide & not others?

I think any rich-text editor will do this, so try Dreamweaver, FrontPage or Nvu.
Dreamweaver & FrontPage are more categorized as IDEs rather than rich-text editors.

[Jerry]

What's the best text editor actually?

Very subjective, it's the same as asking a mechanic what are the best tools, a lot will say Snap On others wont.

I know that I am more productive with certain tools over others depending on the job, and that will vary from person to person.

[Quillz]

E Text Editor (http://www.e-texteditor.com/) for Windows is promising.

It's still in beta and it's feature set is still a work in progress. It's looking to be a clone of TextMate for Windows - the developer is working with TextMate's developer to make it work with TextMate's bundles, etc.
Nice... I've been hoping for a TextMate clone/port to Windows and/or Linux for a while. Hopefully this is it.

[Dream]

The E TextEditor looks very interesting, thanks for sharing the link. I'm gonna try it out.

Very subjective, it's the same as asking a mechanic what are the best tools, a lot will say Snap On others wont.

I know that I am more productive with certain tools over others depending on the job, and that will vary from person to person.

Not sure what to tell you... I was looking forward for a discussion about the best text editors, not the actual best text editor, I wrote it wrong. I'm looking for something that can beat Homesite for me in features, usability etc. It would be cool if you could say what are the best tools you describe for you and for what purposes you use them.

Also, I'm not so sure I need a text editor that highlights EVERYTHING, but that's me. Highlighting even the $ sign in PHP seems a little too much, like EditPlus does.

[Dark Zero]

UltraEdit here :)

[urdu]

i use Notepad++

[Jerry]

It would be cool if you could say what are the best tools you describe for you and for what purposes you use them.

In that case I use jEdit for just about everything as I do a lot of dev where its best to have a comprehensive and easily customizable IDE, having a big list on online plugins makes that easier to manage, Textpad as a scratch pad.

On a minor point, having it in Java means I can run it on a server and export the display so it doesn't matter what desktop I'm on I don't loose the context of my dev environment.

All barning the version control is in there at the moment.

[Dean C]

My personal preferences are:

Java - eclipse
PHP - Ultraedit
C# - Visual Studio
Lisp - emacs

:)

[simsim]

What are you programming with LISP for, Dean?

[Dean C]

What are you programming with LISP for, Dean?

I did a module at university this year on Software for AI. We used LISP to develop a semi-intelligent knowledge base for our coursework, and after despising the language at first, I grew to love it. It isn't ideal for all tasks, but it's great for others, as is the case with most programming languages.

[simsim]

Yes, I know LISP is used extensively in AI-related projects. I read about it many years ago, got introduced to it's basic syntax, but never considered learning it. Was the project related to linguistics?

[RattleSnake]

The original notepad 4 life!!
LOL. JK, UltraEdit is pretty cool.

[Dean C]

Yes, I know LISP is used extensively in AI-related projects. I read about it many years ago, got introduced to it's basic syntax, but never considered learning it. Was the project related to linguistics?

Nope, mine was to create a database of movies, categorized by genres and other stuff. And then the system picked similar movies that might interest the user based on what they'd already watched. For example if they mainly watched old comedy movies, it'd reccomend some of those. And if they only liked new drama films which generally had ratings on IMDB of over 7.0, then it'd reccommend those etc.