Thread

I am entering the world of ee and I use Dreamweaver for all of my jobs.
But, since I started to develop interest in ee I quickly realized that I miss my favorite feature, code auto-complete.

My questions is not really what is the best editor for ee, but which one offers an auto-complete and is most user friendly (like Dw is).

Windows or Mac?

Most good editors have had auto-complete for years. I’ve used http://www.blumentals.net/webuilder/ (Win only) for the last 5 (or is it 6) years as it suits my style of working, it’s always had auto-complete 😊

I don’t really mind, because I have Mac laptop and PC as a desktop. I am looking for an ExpressionEngine auto-complete. For example when I type exp: the auto-complete pops up.

I do believe that WebBuilder is a good app, but Im looking something that will be my ee exclusive editor. I’ll use Dw for the rest of stuff.

If I remember correctly, Espresso has autocomplete. I sure wish Coda had it though :|

Espresso has auto complete and has a plugin which allows for EE autocomplete as well. I’ve been using it lately and it works fairly well.

My other editor of choice is Textmate and I believe you can also get a plugin which will allow for auto-completing EE tags.

Ben, can you supply some links, where to find that ee auto-complete plugin?

A quick Google of “expressionengine + espresso”:

http://github.com/anthonyshort/expressionengine.sugar
http://newism.com.au/blog/post/92/espresso-a-sugar-sweet-web-development-experience/

And Googling “expressionengine + textmate”:
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/90902/
http://www.chrisruzin.net/entry/textmate_expressionengine_bundle/P50/

I didnt mean to disrespect. I know Google, but the word of mouth is much stronger. 😊

No worries, I was just taking a little stab 😉 For what it’s worth those are the plugins I use and I think they’re pretty great.

Tnx a lot man. 😊

I’ve relied on PhraseExpress for about a year now!?
It’s been pretty amazing.
I use it with Notepad++ :D

Nice recommendations; I was just going to ask the same.

I’ve been using Textmate for a few years now and love it. It does not have auto-complete that I know of, if someone knows how to do this that would be great, but it does have tab triggers and shortcuts. One of my favorite features is that you can create your own snippets of code and give them a tab trigger. So for example if you have a large set of CSS rules that you use on every site that you build out, you can create a tab trigger and with only a few key strokes start working with all your code.

It also has some other bundles that you can download from members of the EE community.

EE 1.x Bundle:
http://www.chrisruzin.net/entry/textmate_expressionengine_bundle/P50/

EE 2.x Bundle:
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/157411/

The last feature that I love is the integration with Cyberduck (ftp program)! If you save your EE templates as files this is a great feature. You double click on the template in Cyberduck, it loads it up, you edit, save and it uploads the edits back to the server.

We’re putting together a collection of useful resources (modes, bundles, plugins, etc.) for EE developers on Macs. If you decide to use Coda, Textmate or Espresso, here’s a few of the modes/plugins/bundles/sugars that we’ve found to work best: http://hellomountee.com/expressionengine-dev-toolkit/

I have been using Textmate for a couple of years and really like it.  I had looked at a few of the others - Coda in particular - but have a natural aversion to “all-in-one packages (like Dreamweaver, for instance 😊 ).

I find auto-complete to be annoying, since it is wrong some percentage of the time.  Textmate will insert snippets when you ask it to do so, and allows you to roll your own, which is tremendously useful.  One great example specific to EE is the ability to create commonly used CSS shorthand that includes EE variables.

I do not think you can go wrong with any of the suggestion made in this thread - once you become comfortable with whatever you choose, it will be “the best” because you know how to use it!