As a web developer, one tool that is essential for me is a code editor. I write everything by hand so my editor must fit like a glove. When I moved from Windows to Macs back in the late 90’s I was very sad to leave two applications behind. One was Xara X, the amazing vector graphics app, and the other was my code editor, EditPlus.

skEdit is a text/code editor aimed at web developers.

It has all the usual features; good syntax colouring, a clear layout, line numbering etc.

It’s code completion in HTML and CSS kicks ass. It is fast and accurate – the best I’ve used. For PHP it only has hinting for certain functions though, no completetion. You can create your own, but that requires time, and ability!

It also auto completes HTML tags so if you type in the opening tag it will add the closing one automatically.

Pull down menus on the toolbar give you instant access to open documents and document specific sections of your code, eg styles, functions etc.

A really useful feature is that you can edit multiple files (or entire projects) within one window. Either drag a folder onto the icon or use the ‘Site Manager’ to remeber projects for you. The folder structure and filenames appear in a tree in a little side drawer. From here you can move them about the tree and rename, duplicate or delete them (although it feels a bit clumsy at times). Very neat and not unlike TextWrangler and TextMate.

Document wide, or even project wide find and replace is fantastic (and can use regular expressions) as is the (s)FTP integration.

Another handy feature is the ‘snippets’ facilitiy. These are like macros to insert or format code in a pre defined manner. For example type a list of items each on a new line, then highlight the list and select the ‘make ordered list’ snippet and bingo, ol’s and li’s all added instantly (with closing tags). You can easily make your own snippets too.

It is well integrated with the W3c Tidy app so you can format and tidy up code from a menu – very handy if you need to quickly pull some old code into line.

It does not auto detect if a document being edited has been changed externally like TextMate and SubEthaEdit, although it does detect changes to the project folder structure ie if a folder is moved/renamed in the finder or other app. Auto detect for document changes would be a really nice feature for a future release.

In a perfect world I’d like to see bracket matching and code folding (TextMate), detection of external document changes (Textmate), PHP auto completion to match the built in HTML completion, and live PHP previewing (HyperEdit).

The autors website (www.skti.org) is a good information resource and contains a load of helpful information.

No one editor has the perfect set of features, and I’ve not covered all of skEdits here, but overall, skEdit is seriously good and my editor of choice on OS X. I’ve been using it for a few years now and it’s not let me down once.

Get on over to www.skti.org and try it out. C’mon, it’s $20 for a LIFETIME license, you really can’t go wrong.

I realise this is a very personal review but hopefully it will help someone out.

Others worth considering…

TextMate – edit anything from text to code. Handles multiple files and has loads of great features including bracket matching. Also does really funky ‘code folding’ so you can just fold up stuff thats getting in the way! Well worth trying.
TextWrangler – not real a code editor but a damn fine text editor, BBEdit’s baby brother, and it’s free!
HyperEdit – PHP, Javascript and HTML editing with live preview as you type, including PHP! Very funky, but only one file per window.
SubEthaEdit – amazing collaborative document editor but only one file per window (ok, ok it’s a big issue for me!).

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.