If you design and build web pages for a living, then you probably have used a code editor. It is one of the tools of the web design trade. So you should have one that is powerful, yet intuitive and easy to use. We are featuring ten of the most popular code, HTML and CSS editors available on either the PC or Mac platform (or, if you are lucky, both). Enjoy and happy coding!
Komodo Edit
- Cost
- Free
- Platform
- Windows, Mac, Linux
- Feature List
- Code Folding
- Split View Editing
- Column/Block Editing
- Syntax Highlighting and Checking
- Detects multiple languages within a file
- Variable Highlighting
- Go To Definition
- Key Bindings
- Vi/Vim, emacs included
- Powerful Snippets and Macros
Coda 2
- Cost
- $75
- Platform
- Mac
- Feature List
- Code Folding
- Autocomplete variables and functions in a document.
- Automatic indentation, smarter closing tags, etc.
- Streamlined Find & Replace
- Code Focus
- Git
- Full File Browser
- FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and S3, Transmit-style
- Multiple Placeholders
- Dynamic Placeholders
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Import/Export
- List view
- iCloud Sync for Sites & Clips
- Revolutionary New CSS Pops
- Live updating
- Built-in Web Inspector
- Built-In MySQL Editor
- Edit Structure and Content
- Run Arbitrary Queries
- Live Code Hints
- Better Validation
EditPlus
- Cost
- Single user lic. is $35
- Platform
- Windows
- Feature List
- Syntax Highlighting
- Custom Syntax Files
- Seamless Web Browser
- FTP
- Hex Viewer
- HTML Toolbar
- User Tools
- Line Numbering
- Ruler
- URL Highlighting
- Auto Complete
- Column Selection
- Search and Replace
- Multiple Undo/redo
- Spell Checker
- Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
TopStyle Pro
- Cost
- Single user lic. $79.95
- Platform
- Windows
- Feature List
- Syntax Highlighting
- Seamless Web Browser
- Line Numbering
- URL Highlighting
- Search and Replace
- Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
- Unicode Support
- XRay
- Prefixr
- HTML Toolbar
- CSS Groups
- CSS3 Media Queries
- CSS Validator
StyleMaster
- Cost
- $59.99
- Platform
- Windows, Mac
- Feature List
- Syntax Highlighting
- Seamless Web Browser
- Line Numbering
- URL Highlighting
- Search and Replace
- Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts
- Unicode Support
- XRay
- HTML Toolbar
- CSS Groups
- CSS3 Media Queries
- CSS Validator
- Online Document Templates
- Style Master Wizards
TextMate
- Cost
- Single user lic. 39EU (about $53)
- Platform
- Mac
- Feature List
- Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
- Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
- Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
- Clipboard History
- Column Selections and Column Typing
- Completion of Words from Current Document
- CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings
- Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking
- Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
- Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
- File Tabs when Working With Projects
- Foldable Code Blocks
- Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
- Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language
- Recordable Macros With No Programming Required
- Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)
- Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
- Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
- Support for More Than 50 Languages
- Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes
- Themable Syntax Highlight Colors
- Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
- Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
- Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects
CoffeeCup HTML Editor (PC) | Web Editor (Mac)
- Cost
- $69
- Platform
- Windows (HTML Editor), Mac (Web Editor)
- Feature List
- Cross-browser compatibility is important, so the HTML Editor gives you the option to add up to 10 different browsers and then open them from inside the program.
- The built-in Validate HTML tool opens the W3C markup validation service in your default web browser.
- HTML and CSS code completion virtually eliminates unclosed tags and typos; it even serves up the selectors from every referenced CSS file.
- The HTML Editor comes with 10 new, professionally designed themes. Preview them before you apply them to your pages in the snazzy new Theme Chooser.
- The Tags tab is a comprehensive reference for (X)HTML, PHP, and CSS tags.
- Split-Screen Preview lets you view your webpage in a browser right from inside the Code Editor.
- We’ve streamlined the app by removing older features, like the Visual Editor and preview tab.
TextWrangler/BBEdit
- Cost
- Free/$49.99
- Platform
- Mac
- Feature List
- Optimized for Intel Macs (requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later)
- Multiple Undo
- Multiple Clipboards
- Splittable editing windows
- Extensively configurable key equivalents
- Show and hide individual menu items or entire menus
- Transparently reads and writes DOS, Unix, and Mac files
- Transparently reads and writes gzip (.gz) and BZ2 (.bz2) compressed files
- Transparently reads and writes files stored within Zip compressed archives (BBEdit only)
- Automatic backup of files when saving (optional)
- Periodic auto-save
- Complete set of HTML Tools
- Built-in Tidy support
- Comprehensive HTML Entities palette
- Flexible ‘grep’ style pattern-based search
- “Live Search” highlights
- Built-in file and folder comparison with Find Differences
- Open, edit, and save files in a wide variety of character sets (including UTF-8 and UTF-16)
- Automatic source-code language guessing
- Can be used as an external editor for Xcode
- Unix command-line access
- Emacs key-binding support
- Extensive FTP and SFTP support
- Bonjour discovery of local servers
- Function-navigation and syntax-coloring support for more than 20 programming languages, including HTML, JavaScript, Java, Perl, C++, Objective-C, and more
- Text completion
- Code folding
- Run Unix scripts and filters (including Perl, Python, Ruby, and shell script) from a built-in menu
- Native Mac OS X spelling checker
- Spell checking
- Integrated support for Subversion and Perforce version control (BBEdit only)
- Use BBEdit’s legendary text processing power in any Automator workflow (BBEdit only)
- Comprehensive PDF user manual provided
Sublime Text
- Cost
- $70 for user license (across as many computers as you own)
- Platform
- Mac, Windows, Linux
- Feature List
- Goto Anything
- Command Palette
- Split Editing
- Instant Project Switch
- Customize Anything
- Cross Platform
Code Lobster
- Cost
- Free, Lite($39.95), Pro ($119.95)
- Platform
- Windows
- Feature List
- PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS code highlighting
- HTML autocomplete
- HTML/CSS code inspector
- HTML toolbar
- CSS autocomplete
- PHP Debugger
- HTML
- Class View
- Lite version also includes HTML, CSS, PHP code validator; SQL manager; support for Version
- Control Systems: SVN, Git etc.
Certain characters have to be formatted as HTML entities in order to render properly. The Characters tab lets you insert these entities with a click of your mouse.
Website Projects help keep your website organized, all but eliminating broken links and incorrectly referenced images.
Joni Mueller has been designing web sites for hire since 2003, when she first blew up her web host’s server by insisting on running Greymatter. Since then, Joni has designed for Blogger and Movable Type, TextPattern, WordPress and CMS Made Simple. She lives with her cat and shoe collection in a bucolic old section of Houston called Idylwood. For some strange reason, Joni likes to refer to herself in the third person. When she’s not working on web design, she’s ordering lawyers around. And blogging about it. Or both.
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