BBEdit has long been the go - to text editor of choice for Mac - using geeks . But as it get on , BBEdit started to show its year , with fresh features piled on top of previous features , which had been piled on top of still older features . In version 8.5.2 , Bare Bones has give the onetime star a face - rise , restructuring and simplify the interface to make BBEdit look like a hot fresh app . Along the way , they ’ve added in some handy new feature article , hand this version a full readiness of enhancements .
Simplify, simplify, simplify
BBEdit ’s old Preferences window was an example of how a decade of port increase could make conform to change confuse for anyone but a long - prison term user . The current Preferences window has been massively simplified : obsolete options have been removed and the entire window expanded , making the stay items prosperous to obtain . Not soft enough ? enter the search drawer , typewrite in enough to give BBEdit a hint of what you ’re looking for , and you ’ll get a list of potential choice . penetrate on one , and that pane opens .
The tool taproom has also been reworked ; rather than containing several pop - up menus , there ’s now just one . Some selection have been moved into the seafaring and status bars , where they ’re more well viewed , launch , and changed .
While Bare Bones has streamlined BBEdit , you’re able to also make it leaner and meaner yourself . Go into the Menus panelling of the Preferences and deform off any options that you do n’t use . You live in C++ and do n’t tinct HTML ? ferment off all HTML items , and you ’ll never see them again . You ’re a Web designer who has always been nettle by the compiler choices ? grow them off . The closing result is that BBEdit suddenly feel like a much lighter , svelter program , without really losing any of its tycoon .
Along with making BBEdit easier to expend , Bare Bones has also made BBEdit well-fixed to buy . There ’s no longer a puzzling cross - grade alternative from a costless product or for owners of some competing products ; it ’s now $ 125 , with affordable pick for promote users .
Even more power
For those who desire power tools , they ’ve been impart in abundance . Applications like TextMate and Dreamweaver ( ) have long had code folding , which lets you fill up up sections of code and markup that you do n’t require to see , and now BBEdit has this feature of speech . You click the new disclosure triangles in the left - hand toilet to close up block that BBEdit can identify ; for those it ca n’t automatically discover ( such as JavaScriptfor loopsandif / elseblocks ) , you’re able to manually select a range of codification and close it .
BBEdit ’s language support has been enhance to include SQL ( include MySQL , PostgreSQL , PL / SQL and Transact - SQL ) , Ruby , and YAML ( Yet Another Markup Language ) , and its JavaScript support has been meliorate . One limitation of BBEdit is that it must be updated with fresh spoken language support , rather than bank on a chew - in good example . For instance , BBEdit does n’t presently support either Apple ’s canvas HTML tag or its Dashboard - region styles , limiting its usefulness for writing Dashboard whatsis . It is possible for third parties to add some lacking composition : for example , John Gruber’sCSS Syntax Checkeradds a much - needed sentence structure proof feature that I wish shipped with BBEdit .
BBEdit ’s Cs functionality has long been one of its weakest golf links , and it has n’t improved much in this adaptation . For example , Apple includes some CSS 3 properties in Safari such as text - dark , but BBEdit only supports CSS 2.1 . My examination also came across a hemipterous insect that rewrites and change some border mode values ; Bare Bones has acknowledged this and expects to desex it in an upcoming loss .
If you practice BBEdit as a A-one - charged authorship peter , you have n’t been left out . Its young piece - checking feature includeCheck spelling as you type , allow you to know directly when you ’ve made an wrongdoing . And while BBEdit has been rock-and-roll - square in all the year I ’ve used it , its novel auto - save feature now celebrate you from lose data when your Mac crash .
That ’s not all : Bare Bones has also raise the Find Differences boast to show specific change within lines , so you no longer have to stare at two lines of computer code trying to visualize out the differences between them . Also new is the ability to read and pen gzip - pack together files . While a long - time lastingness of BBEdit has been its ability to treat huge text file , it ’s nice to be capable to read and write them without having to expand them first and re - press them afterwards .
Macworld’s buying advice
It ’s been more than two years since BBEdit 8.0 ( ) shipped , and base on the added feature , it would have been absolutely reasonable for Bare bone to call this variant 9.0 . Rather than doing that , they ’ve ramped up to 8.5 , with a lower rise price than you might expect from a full version upgrade . If you use variant 8.0 to 8.2 , the $ 30 is well worth it . If you ’ve have an older version of BBEdit , it may be the best $ 40 you ’ll spend on software package . If you have never tried BBEdit , learn out its freeware little chum , TextWrangler ( ) ; if that get you require more , BBEdit will probably be able to treat your more forward-looking needs .
[ Dori Smith is co - author ofJavaScript & Ajax for the Web : Visual QuickStart Guide(Peachpit Press , 2007 ) andMacromedia Dreamweaver 8 : Visual QuickStart Guide(Peachpit Press , 2006 ) . ]
