Mac text editors review

With my hope to find the perfect text/html editor I’ve looked at a selection of programs. I’ll be reviewing these from the point of view of the web designer/developer. And I’ll only be reviewing Mac editors. Sorry about that Windows and Linux users.

There are a few things I’m looking for personally in a text editor. Snippets, option to have background colours to text, HTML tidy, auto complete, collapsible tags, on-the-fly validation, code hints, multi-file find and replace. And its got to look good too - nobody likes a messy program to work in.

I’ll be trying out each of the programs for at least a day. Using them to actually do my work. Its only after you’ve given a program a bit of time do you start to find out its annoying little problems.

TextWrangler

My current tool of choice is TextWrangler. Produced by Bare Bones Software, its an excellent and free text editor that is tidy, simple to use and fast. It is a less functional relative of BBEdit.

It has been a faithful companion for quite some time. But has a few drawbacks that are to be expected from a stripped back version of a full product. It is fast and seems very stable. Its main drawbacks are its lack of collapsible tags and no auto completing text.

Overall its a solid bit of kit and is going to be hard to beat.

Price: free
Features: 50%
Usability: 90%
Stability: 90%
Aesthetics: 80%
Overall: 75%

skEdit

Next on my list to try out is skEdit.

skEdit produced by skti software is a completely different approach to TextWrangler. Its much heavier on the functions but is maybe let down by its more messy interface.

Its also a bit buggy. On a few occasions when trying to click a file from within the file navigation area it failed to register a click or would do something else. The colouring of the code is also sometimes incorrectly displayed. The program is also a bit slow to start up and open up projects or files.

However it has an even greater problem than these. On a few occasions when I deleted part of my code it would claim to have saved it immediately (but actually hadn’t). Then when I actually tried to save it wouldn’t allow me to. Very very frustrating.

Price: $34.95
Features: 90%
Usability: 70%
Stability: 40%
Aesthetics: 70%
Overall: 60%

Coda

Next. Coda. And first impressions of Coda are excellent. Panic have created a pretty and well constructed program.

It has a similar layout and feature list to skEdit. But once you jump from skEdit to Coda you just feel like you’re in a much more stable and safe environment. It includes snippets, on-the-fly validation, code hints and the other essentials. The code hints didn’t work quite as expected. When I was creating a PHP file with HTML in it only gave PHP hints. Which was a bit of a shame.

The other problem I discovered with it was it can be slow at times. When opening and saving files it could take up to 10 or 20 seconds. This may not seem that long but when you’re doing it time and time again is very frustrating. Although this is Coda’s only real problem it is quite fundamental. I hope to see this glitch sorted out in future releases. But wait a minute! I’ve just trialed the new version of Coda. Version 1.5. And they’ve sorted out these glitches. Great news!

Coda also includes its own very capable ftp. I’ve heard, from the Coda forum, that this can also be slow. But I didn’t discover any problem with file uploads. And I believe its been sorted in version 1.5.

I’ve been using this trial for quite some time. Its a joy to use and is going to be a tough act to beat.

Price: $99
Features: 95%
Usability: 95%
Stability: 85%
Aesthetics: 95%
Overall: 95%

TextMate

Well, well, well. It looks like Coda’s got some competition. TextMate by MacroMates is a lovely bit of kit. Its received huge praise. One web developer I spoke to about it said that it was one of the main reasons PC developers were moving to the Mac.

At first glance I have to admit that I dismissed TextMate. This was mainly due to the fact that TextMate isn’t a show off. It doesn’t wear all its features for everyone to see, which does result in you missing them if you don’t look. It hides them away a bit. Not in an annoying way, just in a subtle way.

Although you don’t see it at first, TextMate is packed with features. Its a lovely simple application with the ability to alter the way you do everything, meaning you can make it fit the way you work perfectly.

Price: €48.75
Features: 90%
Usability: 85%
Stability: 95%
Aesthetics: 90%
Overall: 90%

Some others I tried

Smultron, by Peter Borg, is most comparable with TextWrangler. Its a simple text editor with none of the bells and whistles that some of the other editors possess. It has the same simplicity of TextWrangler, but in my opinion TextWrangler is a better option.

Aptana Studio is a big and again messy program. Its a 100MB which I think tells you a fair amount about what its like. For me there’s just too much going on. If you like to have loads of features then this probably has them but I’m just not sure. Too many buttons for my liking. A bit scary.

Komodo Edit for me was a big no no. It was so ugly and messy. If you like messy then go for it, but I couldn’t work with it.

Conclusion

So who’s the winner? Well its Coda. I’ve parted with my cash and bought it. For the way I work it offers the most. The ability to intergrate editing code and uplading files together is a joy and a big time saver. Its a beautiful program to work in. And with code hinting and snippets it had everything I wanted. TextMate did come a close second. And I think if you’re more of a programmer than I, it may well be the program for you.

Coda has been a pleasure to use, and I’m enjoying all the benefits it has. Well done Panic.

Note

Since purchasing Coda I have ocassionaly struggled with a little slow down in the application on saving and opening projects. The guys at Panic have been very thorough in diagnosing the problem (if a little slow) and it seems to be an OS problem. If I start Coda up as one of the first applications I open then the problems seem to dissapear. Even with this slightly annoying bug Coda is still an excellent and worthy winner.