BBEdit 8
Posted August 30th, 2004 @ 01:53pm by Erik J. Barzeski
BBEdit 8 is now available. I'll amend this post later with thoughts. The multi-document-in-one-window idea looks good, though.
What's new?
Text Factories look good - but I'll have to get into them. I work on so many different kinds of files that I don't frequently find use for the glossary and some other things, but perhaps I'll be able to work Text Factories into my workflow.
Unicode support is finally there for real, unlike we saw in 7.x
Preview Server support looks interesting, and if it's pulled off properly, is quite lovely. I'm probably still more likely to use this AppleScript when working on my site(s).
CSS Tools get a big yawwwwn, but the Built-in HTML Tidy Tool and the HTML Syntax Checker look like very welcome additions. The enhanced unix integration is also welcomed.
The Documents Drawer is, in the end, something I'm probably just going to dismiss. Adium does it right with tabs, and there's a Windows app I'm thinking of that uses tabs all along the bottom (the name escapes me - EditPlus? EditPro? Something like that?) quite effectively as well. A really tall drawer takes up too much of my screen real estate with unused white pixels - just as OmniWeb's stupid drawer does. This is a big bust to me. I've been waiting for something like that Windows app for awhile now.
Oh, and the icon is rather hideous, too. I liked the old one more and have reverted to it.
Beyond that, well, it's the same good ol' text editor it always has been. I probably use about 5% of its features, so, don't listen to me on the topic. 🙂
Donate Life
Posted 30 Aug 2004 at 2:35pm #
The server preview for viewing PHP pages in BBEdit looks nice. I plan to upgrade later today.
Posted 30 Aug 2004 at 2:39pm #
I've been using SubEthaEdit for my duties. It's a helluva lot cheaper, and I guess I'm on the basic side of needed functionality.
I like the icon a lot more, too 😉
Posted 30 Aug 2004 at 2:58pm #
I'm another SubEthaEdit convert. The existence of things like this Tidy Service and TextExtras mean that I have vanishingly little need for a single do-everything monolithic text editor (a la BBEdit or Emacs) and more use for apps that take advantage of the power and flexibility of Unix pipes and OS X goodies like Services and InputManagers.
Posted 30 Aug 2004 at 3:03pm #
You know, I like the drawer. It's unobtrusive if you only have one document open, and if you have more than one, it opens along the horizontal axis, not the vertical axis...
On my PowerBook, I've got more horizontal screen space than vertical, so it's nice. It's been one of the few issues I've had with Safari, too. I like OW's tab drawer, even if the implementation of the idea is less than perfect. OW has too many other issues, but the drawer is nice...
Posted 31 Aug 2004 at 12:40pm #
EditPlus is the windows text editor you're thinking of. Back when my company had me on a PC, I used EditPlus for HTML and frankly, I've never used anything as good, on any platform.
Well, actually, various Mac programs exceed editplus on various counts, like better text hilighting engines and in general, better polish. But EditPlus started from cold in less than half a second on my p3 ( SubEthaEdit takes, what, 3 seconds on my G4... ) and EditPlus's tabs were small, quiet, and functional. Good support for keyboard shortcuts. Well worth whatever I paid for it... 30 bucks? I can't recall.
Posted 01 Sep 2004 at 4:57pm #
You don't have to use the drawer in BBEedit. Use the navigation bar. It's more elegant, but does the same thing as the huge drawer.
Posted 01 Sep 2004 at 5:08pm #
I think the navigation bar is lame too. Adium's tabs get it perfectly, I think. Plus, the list is always alphabetical, which sucks.
Posted 09 Sep 2004 at 10:19am #
I love/hate BBEdit. These days the hate side is winning. I want to use other programs like SubEthaEdit, but I can't seem to figure out how to do the most important things which for me are the menu keys(shortcuts) and the glossary items. These two features alone increase my productivity by %900 and I simply cannot live without them.
I have tried to find ways to access this kind of functionality in SubEthaEdit but I keep coming up dry. Their documentation is a weak, and while it does make a casual mention of TextExtras, it doesn't really explain how they fit in.
I have tried to figure out what TextExtras is and it seems to get complicated and beyond my depth pretty quickly. I'm willing to put in the time to figure it out if I'm sure it is the right thing but no one really ever talks about it so I'm weary of getting lost on a rabbit trail.
Is there some sort of online resource, reference, guide or tutorial that explains any of this stuff better? Perhaps someone could pount me in the right direction.
Posted 13 Sep 2004 at 3:58pm #
hicksdesign has a new drop-in replacement icon for the rather hideous one that comes stock with version 8. It's nice, though I still like the version 7 one a lot.