This is the second in a 3-part series.
In my previous post, I covered a couple of free applications. In this installment, I look at two paid text editors, both with strong caveats.
UltraEdit 2.1
UltraEdit presents another clean, cross-platform option, albeit one that is not free. When I opened the app the first time, it hijacked all .php and .css files and made itself the default application. I prefer a choice in the matter, and although it took seconds to switch back, this was annoying. UltraEdit comes with a 30-day trial, and costs $59.95 for a full license.
You can open multiple files in a tabbed view. Line numbers are on by default, and color-coding manages PHP and HTML side by side. Find and Replace actions are separated via tabs in the Find and Replace window. You can create project workspaces or work with independent documents. If you have the screen real-estate you can display a variety of views, from files to function lists. This tool might be one to grow with and make the transition to an IDE easier. It also has a Windows feel to it, so if you’re making a transition to the Mac from Windows there might be a comfort factor here. I don’t know if UltraEdit stands out enough from the other apps to make me adopt it as a daily tool, but it’s still a strong app to consider.
TextMate 1.5
TextMate‘s strength appears to lie in managing projects, or possibly other development languages like Ruby on Rails, not so much PHP. One very nice feature is that the project window lets you drag and drop a folder into the drawer, and you instantly have access to all the files. Each file you select opens in its own tab.
There are pros and cons with tabbed text editor views. The main advantage is real-estate, as you keep all windows within the application. The disadvantage comes when you want to compare documents side by side. Inside each document the color-coding shows up nicely, along with shaded areas where you can fold the code between matching tags. Line numbers were not apparent in the document, only the footer line. Also, the preferences in TextMate are sparse.
The biggest downside for the new PHP developer is dealing with code completion. In TextMate this requires that you start typing and then press the ESC key. The function still does not fill in the parameters. For example, in_array just codes as red text and contains nothing after the term. Possibly there are ways to enhance this through some additional programming. After seeing other FileMaker developers advocate for this tool, I’ve tried several times to get comfortable using with no success.
You can download a 30-day trial version. The cost for TextMate is $57. I expected something more for the price so I can’t recommend this for PHP development.
In comparing these two paid apps to the free ones in my previous post (TextWrangler and KomodoEdit), both in my opinion fall somewhat short. As I see it, these types of apps should be relatively intuitive, but both UltraEdit and TextMate made me spend time cleaning up, or finding features and ways to use them. In the next post I cover two additional paid apps, both with fewer limitations than these.
TextMate is a full-featured text editor available for Mac OS X that can greatly enhance your text manipulation skills.
Hi Anders
I’m one of those TextMate-loving FileMaker developers you mention 🙂
– To view line numbers, select View > Gutter > Line Numbers
– For comparing two files, TM makes it easy to perform a Diff on two selected files in the “project drawer”. If you want to see two files side-by-side, you can Ctrl+Click a file in the project drawer and select ‘Open “filename” in New Window…’
– As for code-completion, I thought it’d be easier to show it than explain it, so I made a quick video and put it up on my blog: Showin’ some TextMate love (a code-completion video). Hope it’s helpful.
Thanks for the helpful reviews. I’m also on the TextMate wagon, but it took me a while.
For a while I would switch back to Komodo for the extra friendly code suggestions and completion. But for things I am more familiar with, I love the simplicity and power of TextMate. It gives me what I want without any distractions. And it’s easy to customize. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I’m creating my own custom syntax highlighting rules and commands, etc. I’m fine with the learning curve because I spend so much time in the application.
Hi Joel,
Thanks for the comments and the video. TextMate documentation (like in many programs) is sadly lacking, but I was able to quickly find the line number option once you pointed this out.
Also, your video is invaluable. I wish that TextMate would have made the TAB key function more obvious. Being able to auto-complete major functions like loops and control statements in PHP for example, and “form” or “input” tags in HTML is extremely useful. I am not sure why it needs the Option-Esc (not a very finger-intuitive combination) for other functions. I found that typing “input” and hitting the tab key did bring up a drop down with options, so why won’t the same work for “subs” to show substr or substring_replace? And, the context-aware commenting feature is brilliant. In BBEdit I mapped the comment feature to a keyboard shortcut, which strangely is not part of the default keyboard commands. However, I generally have to select the line to comment it, rather than being in the line – a feature that I liked in ZendStudio.
I share Donovan’s comments about TextMate’s simplicity and power, but in my case for BBEdit. Perhaps I need to give TextMate another chance, and take some time to discover some of these features. I won’t say that BBEdit never annoys me, as I’ve also had to switch to Komodo or ZendStudio for some extra debugging features – to the point sometimes where I wish I had invested the time to fully embrace an IDE, even though I use my text editors for more than PHP.
Anders,
Being a Wierdnows user, my preferred text-editors are: CoffeeCup, Notepad++ and my favourite is SublimeText2 (v1.0 was good but 2 is really good). For Mac I plan on going with Espresso – soon (finally decided to cross the bridge :))
These days I prefer IDE’s. My favourite is NetBeans for all round development, but WebStorm if I’m focussing on solely on PHP. I’m dying to try out MacVim also.
Darren.
Darren, Thanks for the CoffeeCup and SublimeText2 suggestions! I use Notepad++ when in Windows – so much nicer than the default Notepad.