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I am curious to know what text editors you guys use or recommend?

I keep coming back to TextMate. #1 as far as I’m concerned. There is even an ExpressionEngine syntax highlighting bundle available for it.

I highly recommend this guy’s recommendations including Project+, GetBundles and Ack In Project: http://al3x.net/2008/12/03/how-i-use-textmate.html

After you have GetBundles installed, grab the ExpressionEngine bundle.

If you upload your sites to an external development server, the “Synchronize remote directory [rsync+ssh]” bundle is awesome so you don’t have to keep open an external FTP program. I’ve edited it’s shell scripts so that they do not present error messages when the bundle isn’t confirgured for a project, then bind it’s actions to CMD+S and CMD+Shift+S so it always uploads files if I am working on an appropriately configured project. Pretty slick stuff I think.

Good luck in your search. 😊

Thanks Airways!

I have Notepad++. What are the other softwares where they have expression engine syntax highlighted?

And is Dreamweaver still popular among designers?

I work predominantly on Windows, and I have recently switched to phpDesigner 7. I have been doing a fair amount of work in CodeIgniter & EE development, and phpDesigner has made my life easier. It was less than $100 and I quite like it so far. There are a few little UI things that trip me up every now and then, but it is very powerful, feature rich, quick, and fun to work in for the most part.

For the last couple of years I have worked with a combo of Notepad++ and Dreamweaver (code view). Dreamweaver is a fairly good code editor, but the fact that it automatically determines syntax by the file extension is annoying when working with EE templates. Especially if you are wanting to code PHP in a template that ends in .html (EE2) or write in a JavaScript template ending in .php (EE1). It is also kinda clunky. However, I love that fact that it provides autocomplete popups for HTML entities and can format (indentation, nesting, etc) HTML and CSS documents with the click of a button - a nice time saver when you need to work with other peoples jumbled code. Notepad++ is fast, has some nice shortcuts and lets you choose syntax highlighting independent of file extension.

However, I have not found any good EE tag auto-complete features for any Window text editors, and would be interested if anyone had any good suggestions. It really is not too big a deal though as I have been working in EE for years and have no problem typing the tags…

Oh I forgot to mention E. It’s a Windows compatible clone of TextMate that even includes support for it’s bundles system, so all the cool stuff I mentioned above works with it (I believe, have not personally experienced this but I have heard good things). http://www.e-texteditor.com/

We also use PhpStorm at work, which is an excellent PHP IDE. http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/ There is very little to dislike about this IDE, it’s fast and runs everywhere.

Thanks for the tips Airways! I was really excited about E a couple of years ago, installed it, and had problems getting it to work. I think the project was young then and kind of buggy. I will give it another go when I have some time. I will also try PhpStorm sometime. It’s nice that all of these text editors have 30 day trials!

I forgot to mention that phpDesigner also has a nice FTP feature built. It seamlessly integrates into your project and doesn’t leave all of the junk files like Dreamweaver. Here is the link if anyone is interested: http://www.mpsoftware.dk/phpdesigner.php

What is the drawback of Dreamweaver? I see a lot of people saying the new version has a lot of features.

Dreamweaver provides no support for PHP development… it really is only useful or worth the money if you actually use it’s WYSIWYG features. That’s sort of a different topic… but to be honest I don’t think anyone should need it’s drag and drop stuff. It produces HTML and Javascript that isn’t very standards compliant and certainly isn’t optimal. I just don’t see the benefit to Dreamweaver (with it’s associated price tag) over TextMate or Notepad++.

That said a lot of the best slice & dice people I know for some insane reason still use Dreamweaver - even though they would *never* use it’s drag & drop WYSIWYG stuff. Totally inexplicable to me, but YMMV.

(As an aside, if Dreamweaver was rewritten to use modern CSS3 and jQuery as it’s basis… well, then it might be a lot more interesting to me.)

There are a lot of good things about Dreamweaver as a code editor, design view aside (I never use it). You can use it to sync/push/pull from remote servers with your local project directory. It also has the ability to “check” files in or out, making it a nice way to keep multiple people who are working on the same project from overwriting each others work. There are a number of other really nice features that Dreamweaver has, like the code cleanup/formatting abilities I mentioned before. Additionally, it does give code tips for core PHP variable names, globals, functions, etc., as well as for the file in which you are working. It also does PHP syntax checking and will flag any lines of code that have syntax errors.

Dreamweaver is bundled with a few of the Adobe Creative Suite options, so if you are a creative professional, you may be able to get it for relatively inexpensively, or you may already have it… I use Photoshop, Flash, Flash Develop, and a number of other Creative Suite programs regularly, and have had Dreamweaver for several years as part of the CS bundle.

The problem with Dreamweaver for EE development, is the fact that you cannot choose the syntax highlighting for the file - it is automatically chosen based on the file extension. If you are, for example, editing a template file (which will end in .html in EE2), and you enable PHP on your template, you will not get any syntax highlighting for PHP. Other editors generally allow you to change the syntax highlighting file type, or just figure it out automatically. Another problem is that Dreamweaver takes a bit more time to start up than other editors, and feels a little more slugish.

If you are doing heavy PHP editing, Dreamweaver is alright, but probably not ideal. I have coded extensively in Dreamweaver, but it does not have the coding tools and abilities that some of the more focused PHP editors do. Some of the things I like about phpDesigner 7 is that it has great code completion for PHP (and JavaScript). It will scan the entire project codebase and provide you with detailed code hinting. You can also change the syntax highlighting mode independent of the file extension. It also has good code completion for phpDocumentor, syntax checking, line bookmarking (which is painfully absent in Dreamweaver), debugging, and just seems overall smarter and easier to use.

That being said, I still like Dreamweaver and have no problems coding in it. I just prefer phpDesigner 7. I have also tried Eclipse (which I sometimes use for Flex), and NetBeans. Others swear by those editors, and they are not bad. It is just a personal preference. I will also give PhpStorm and E a chance when I get some time.

http://www.vim.org/

I don’t think any other editor aside from Emacs has stood the test of time so well and it’s still heavily used.

As a text editor, it has everything you need.  If you are more of an IDE guy, then it’s probably not what you are looking for.

Hahaha. That’s true John. I guess I have been using IDE interchangeably with text editor. I see your point.

BBEdit and Coda and CSSEdit and Snippets and Transmit and Safari and Firefox.

It’s just so difficult to choose.

Oh, wait.

I chose not to use Dreamweaver.

😊

I like to use Coda.  There is a EE highlighting package too.  You can sync Coda projects up with your SVN too.

I use Coda purely because it’s got the built in FTP and it’s simple and you get full focus on your code without having to mess around with any windows/settings unlike Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver isn’t as lightweight and doesn’t play nice with tabbing and code organisation. I’ve used PHP designer through university and it’s terrible I think.