Need advice - Best tool? Expresso or Code, etc...

Every knows its Dreamweaver, if your new though CS4 will be a challenge for you to learn, and it also depends which codes you use mainly, but for ASP and PHP dreamwaver is great because it easily colour differentiates them for you in the code.

BBEdit is good- it has syntax highlighting for all of those languages if I remember correctly.

I've never been a fan of Dreamweaver myself, and there isn't a lot of people here who use it. I use BBEdit to hand code everything (TextWrangler is a free version of BBEdit). Then I test locally using MAMP as my environment.

In the end you need to use an app that fits your methods the best. Take a look through the stickies in this forum and just start trying out apps. Most should have a free trial period so no risks there.

kastenbrust said:

Every knows its Dreamweaver, if your new though CS4 will be a challenge for you to learn, and it also depends which codes you use mainly, but for ASP and PHP dreamwaver is great because it easily colour differentiates them for you in the code.

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Syntax highlighting isn't uncommon.

I use Coda myself, which I quite like, but haven't tried Espresso. 85% of my time is spent in Vim running on assorted Mac and Linux boxes.

Right now I've been using Smultron and Cyberduck for my editing/FTP combo, and Fireworks for images. I'd love to use Espresso, but right now it doesn't work right for my sites (having permissions problems when writing files, and won't connect to one of my servers).

jW

I'd say Textmate, BBEdit and maybe Coda should be your prospects. Espresso doesn't do ASP highlighting (or didn't last time I checked). Textmate is my current IDE, it is incredibly powerful and easy to use. You can add new bundles to give nice features like SVN and FTP integration, tab triggers for your specific language, and much more. I'd recommend BBEdit if you do a lot of Regex, their implementation works better than TM (it gives you a progress bar and doesn't eat up as much CPU power. DW is good, it does all of this-it's just way more expensive.

As a .NET developer, I'm going to say TextMate for everything but ASP.NET.

For ASP.NET, Visual Studio (Pro or the Express Editions) through VMWare Fusion.

kastenbrust said:

Every knows its Dreamweaver, if your new though CS4 will be a challenge for you to learn, and it also depends which codes you use mainly, but for ASP and PHP dreamwaver is great because it easily colour differentiates them for you in the code.

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Unfortunately Dreamweaver is not an effective coding program from my experience with it.

To the OP try TacoHTMLEdit or my new love Espresso combined with CSSEdit and cyberduck for css editing and file uploads it is the best i have found for working with PHP to date. For your ASP stuff i strongly encourage you to learn PHP or Ruby if you are working on the mac platform and if you need to code ASP and ASP.net use a VM or boot camp with the tools you are familiar with.

Personally I prefer Coda over Expresso. Integrated FTP client = WIN!

I originally came from the world of PC, but there are some very nice application out there for macs.

I am currently using:
- Dreamweaver
- Coda
- Espresso
- Textwrangler
- Rapidweaver

I use Coda every day and I love it. The integrated FTP is incredible. less windows floating around my desktop. I dont care for Coda's CSS editor as it isnt smart enough for shorthand and tends to make my css files larger than I would like, I also prefer to hand-code everything rather than use an app like dreamweaver. I use Sequel Pro for MySQL management and MAMP for my development environment. Best thing since sliced bread.

I absolutely love Coda, but as a student I just can't come up with $100 for a license right now; I'm currently using Espresso since it came with the most recent MacHeist bundle. It's very similar to Coda, but just *slightly* inferior in just about every way. Good enough for now, though.

ezekielrage_99 said:

I originally came from the world of PC, but there are some very nice application out there for macs.

I am currently using:
- Dreamweaver
- Coda
- Espresso
- Textwrangler
- Rapidweaver

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curious what you do in each of those progs since many of them cover the same ground.. I'm still searching for the right balance myself.. most of the programs have little quirks that I dislike

I use Espresso and that's it. I use to use Coda but I find the the themes in Espresso make coding far more interesting (I hate coding against a white bright background, kills the eyes after awhile).

darkcurse said:

Personally I prefer Coda over Expresso. Integrated FTP client = WIN!

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Espresso also has an integrated FTP client (as well as SFTP).

memco said:

Espresso doesn't do ASP highlighting (or didn't last time I checked).

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Espresso supports a number of languages, including ASP, through add-on packages.