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Help on choosing a editor? What's your editor of choice?

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Penny23

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 3, 2013
1
0
Hello. I'm working on building a social network website (using wordpress) with my cousin. I've done plenty of sites in the past but one problem I've always had was finding "the" editor!

When I first got my Mac I wanted to buy Textmate as it's an editor I love! However, seeing as how the creator seems to have let go of it I decided not to give it a go. Previously I've tried and (kind of) loved Espresso. I tried Sublime Text and am just not that huge a fan of it. I installed it uninstalled it installed it again and it just sits on my dock ... doesn't seem to keep my attention and I personally prefer an editor solely for Mac. I also enjoyed BBEdit.

I've been thinking of trying Chocolat as it's getting reviews of potentially being the new Textmate. Though it's still relatively new I'm wondering how well is it's performance? And if anyone has tried it what are your thoughts/opinions? Is it worth it?

Other editors I've been considering are Coda - it seems so beautifully designed, has great features, and it seems to be the favorite of most Mac users. Taco is another editor I've been looking at. It's cheaper than all the rest, and seems like a simple but good editor. Though, I don't hear much about Taco (at least not anymore) so is it still a good app?

I will be trying these out for myself but I'd love to hear opinions and thoughts on what you use and which you think is "the" editor? It'll help my decision making in the process :)
 
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Dunmail

macrumors regular
Mar 27, 2009
224
4
Skipton, UK
This gets asked fairly regularly on here (and elsewhere!) - expect a lot of forthright views as editors are very personal.

I've tried a lot of editors over the years, some I've had to use (company policy), others I've used for personal projects. One that has stood the test of time is Vi (or Vim). Even if you don't become fluent in it, which is admittedly hard work, it's useful to know as it's on every Unix/Linux system and is often available on embedded OSs or systems - VxWorks includes it for example.

For the last year or so I've been using Sublime Text - I think I started using it just as ST2 came out. It took a little while to get used to but now I'm happy with it - it just feels right, I don't have to fight it to get it to do what I want since if something doesn't work for me I can change it. I've even got it to work with my employer's source control system. Of course with the package system it is highly extendable and you only have to include the packages you need so there's little or no bloat.

So those are my two choices. Doesn't mean to say that they are the best but they work for me and that's the important thing.
 
fig

fig

macrumors 6502a
Jun 13, 2012
916
83
Austin, TX
Coda for me, I also used Espresso for a while and it had some really nice CSS editing features.
 
grizfan

grizfan

macrumors member
Feb 10, 2012
86
4
Boise, ID
Definitely take advantage of the 30 day trial versions. An editor really is a personal choice and subtle differences in your workflow may tip you one direction or the other. In our 4 person web development team, we have 2 Mac users and 2 Windows users. One person uses Dreamweaver, one uses MS Visual Studio, one uses Coda, and I use BBEdit. All 4 of us are quite happy with our choices, too. But, we each have slightly different roles and needs for an editor...
 
design-is

design-is

macrumors 65816
Oct 17, 2007
1,219
1
London / U.K.
Coda gets my vote. I find it very enjoyable to use.

However, I do find it crashes a fair bit when I'm trying to use the inspector in a preview and have the CSS open next to it in a spilt window... Hoping maybe they'll patch it to fix that at some point.
 
Hakiroto

Hakiroto

macrumors 6502a
Jul 8, 2011
641
221
I used to be a big user of Coda then when I started using Coda 2 (from the release day) I started to get annoyed with it. I tried Sublime Text 2 and I've never looked back but it all depends on what exactly you need and your personal taste.
 
NutsNGum

NutsNGum

macrumors 68030
Jul 30, 2010
2,856
367
Glasgow, Scotland
Used to really enjoy using Coda, then I bought Coda 2 and for some reason, hated it, everything just seemed very muddled and awkward all of a sudden. I also bought diet coda at the time, which for some reason, I could just not get to work at all.

Between buying Coda and Coda 2, I had been fiddling around with other editors like Textmate and Sublime Text 2 and found both to be much less hassle.

I have found ST2 with Emmet.io to be the single biggest change in speeding up workflow. There's just so little faffing around and your code ends up more or less writing itself as you don't have to concern yourself with the multitude of windows for doing other things.

ST2, a few browser tabs, MAMP, Terminal. And that's it.

I honestly would suggest giving it another go with the package installer. I found going from an IDE to a text editor slightly bare at first, but ultimately, you can really tailor it much more to suit your preferences.
 
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lucidmedia

macrumors 6502a
Oct 13, 2008
702
37
Wellington, New Zealand
NutsNGum said:
Used to really enjoy using Coda, then I bought Coda 2 and for some reason, hated it, everything just seemed very muddled and awkward all of a sudden. I also bought diet coda at the time, which for some reason, I could just not get to work at all.

...

I have found ST2 with Emmet.io to be the single biggest change in speeding up workflow. There's just so little faffing around and your code ends up more or less writing itself as you don't have to concern yourself with the multitude of windows for doing other things.
Click to expand...

I too loved Coda 1 and hate Coda 2! Lately I have been using Brackets. A simple, simple text editor.

I wanted to second the excellent recommendation of Emmet.io above. Emmet.io works with many text editors, including coda and brackets...
 
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olup

Cancelled
Oct 11, 2011
383
40
lucidmedia said:
I too loved Coda 1 and hate Coda 2! Lately I have been using Brackets. A simple, simple text editor.

I wanted to second the excellent recommendation of Emmet.io above. Emmet.io works with many text editors, including coda and brackets...
Click to expand...

thanks for the reminder, I remember watching a video about it, but didn't follow up. Just downloaded it and I'm about ten minutes into and love it already! :)

The extensions list is quite nice and some useful stuff in there.

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Brackets-Extensions
 
carlos700

carlos700

macrumors 6502
Dec 17, 2004
354
148
Omaha, NE
I fully recommend Sublime Text 2. I like Chocolat and it has a great Mac feel, but it uses dramatically more memory than ST2 and slows down quickly. However it's still new, so I'm optimistic it will get better.
 
chaos86

chaos86

macrumors 65816
Sep 11, 2003
1,006
7
127.0.0.1
Jessica Lares said:
TextEdit for pure HTML, and then Espresso for CSS.
Click to expand...

This just sounds like you're torturing yourself. No code colouring = not for me.

I'm using Coda for web stuff, ONLY because of the publish/sync feature. If I could pull that feature out into a separate app, I'd switch 100% to Sublime Text.

Sublime Text - The thing (demo) where it lets you pick every instance of a string in the document, and type over ALL of them at once, is an amazing time saver.
 
rufhausen

rufhausen

macrumors regular
Jul 5, 2007
135
0
Littleton, CO
Switched from Coda to Sublime Text 2 a while back and won't go back. It's missing a lot out of the box, but once u install Package Manager, add some relevant packages, add some themes, and understand the config files, it's awesome. Multiple cursors,etc. are a godsend.
It also forced me to adopt Git for deployment over FTP since it doesn't come with FTP support (I added a package for it later, but don't really need it now).
 
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phrk

macrumors member
Mar 26, 2012
47
3
Germany
Penny23 said:
[...] I personally prefer an editor solely for Mac. [...]
Click to expand...

What on earth leads you to this statement?

I use Sublime Text 2 and it's great for me. I really liked that there is no real trial period. I used it for quite some time before I decided to buy it. 30 days might have not been enough for me.
It also seems that it is the most preferred editor on the web so if you need help, you can get it fairly quick.
 
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thbassplaya

macrumors newbie
Aug 23, 2012
8
0
Richmond, Va
Sublime Text 2 gets my vote as well. Its all about the packages you install. You can customize it to operate EXACTLY how you want it. Also you have to learn the keyboard shortcuts or it doesn't help much.

I used textmate for a while but it was replaced by ST2. I would NEVER use dreamweaver or anything along those lines.
 
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